What do we understand by ‘Email Authentication’?
Email Authentication is a technique that is being used to validate the authenticity of your email through genuine sources. It also checks if those senders are eligible to send you the emails. It protects the domain from potential spoofing and phishing attacks.
Why is it needed?
SMTP is the standard protocol to authenticate the transfer of emails, inbound or outbound, that allows cybercriminals to exploit the system. Various kinds of threats can be caused such as email phishing scams, BEC, or domain spoofing attacks. Hence, email authentication increases the security of your domain against various frauds. This acts as a check for the unauthorized and malicious IP addresses that are using your domain to send emails.
Steps to improve the deliverability of emails
There are many techniques to prevent failures and improve the rate of email delivery in the long term.
- Email domain authentication.
Impersonation or mimicking is one of the easiest ways to tamper with the sender’s reputation. If you have not enabled the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) or DomainKeys Identified Email (DKIM), you are more likely to become a victim of email spoofing, which can result in the poor delivery rates of the emails you send.
Adoption of SPF or DKIM proves to the ISPs that you are who you claim to be and are authorized to send emails.
2. Better IP allocation.
One should keep in mind that you will require a proper email infrastructure as you grow with the email program. But once you reach 25,000 daily emails and you add a dedicated IP address, you’ll have a proper understanding of the IP address before sending it to all your senders so that your existing ISPs begin to trust you.
3. Work for the opt-in process.
Email addresses collectively play a huge role in deliverability rates. The optimized opt-in process makes sure that your mailing list is full of active and engaged users. If you are sending emails to users who are unaware or never subscribed to receive emails from you, then your emails are going to be marked as spam and all the ISPs of your list are going to think that you are a regular spammer.
Usage of the double-opt-in process is recommended as it involves two-step authentication for the user and is much more successful.
4. Subject lines with non-spam words.
A subject line is the most important part of any email and is ultimately going to be the deciding factor of whether or not your customer is going to open your email. Even though you regularly send emails to a particular receiver, certain spammy words in the subject line might land you in the spam folder of the client. Therefore, it is a good idea to avoid ‘spam’ words while sending an email.
Some of these words can be ‘Urgent’, ‘Risk-free’, ‘Free’, etc. There is no such general rule about spammy words but one should always be cautious.
5. Provide a preference center.
Once the recipients have agreed to receive messages from you, you should provide a preference center so that you can know how frequently the sender wants to receive the email. This gives the receiver control of their emails and makes them feel respected. This eventually leads to better customer engagement and boosts customer satisfaction.
6. Clear your list regularly.
Always remember that the more you remain inactive, the more damage you cause to your reputation and email deliverability. You should, therefore, provide your customers with an option to unsubscribe from your emails, resulting in user-friendliness.
7. Avoid spam traps.
Spam traps are the email addresses set up by the ISPs and email community to trap spammers and stop them from sending unwanted emails. If your authentic emails land up in a spam trap, they would immediately get flagged and be sent to the spam folder. To prevent spam traps, we should clean our contact list regularly. We should re-establish contact with our existing members and start promoting ourselves for more subscribers to join.
8. Send emails with the proper agenda.
The ISPs and email recipients are the two parties that have to deal with improving email deliverability. However, if one deal and works for email recipients, the ISPs get automatically taken care of. If the end-user is happy, the ISPs become happy as well and you’ll be placed in the inbox of your beneficiaries and not in their spam folders.
Conclusion:
Guaranteeing your emails are delivered correctly is the initial step towards beginning a discussion with your prominent leads. There are many variables influencing email deliverability, for example, email IP reputation, the conduct of the receivers, and the content of the email. Using DMARC email authentication via smart apps like EmailAuth can help you cover your email domain server in the best way. This will ensure that you benefit from high deliverability, high domain reputation, and streamlined authentication for all your emails. Get it now!
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