Email Deliverability FAQ

Email deliverability refers to the level of success your email campaign has in reaching the inboxes of your intended recipients. It is influenced by several key factors such as:

• Sender reputation

• Authentication

• Content

• Recipient engagement

To improve your deliverability, see Email Deliverability Best Practices.

Sender reputation refers to the reliability and credibility of your brand as an email sender. Inbox service providers determine your sender reputation based on sending patterns and practices, and consider this when sorting emails in a recipient’s inbox. Brands with a positive sender reputation are more likely to have their emails delivered to customers’ inboxes. Brands with a low sender reputation are more likely to experience issues such as emails being placed in the spam folder or not being delivered at all.

Sender reputation is influenced by all activities associated with the sending domain or IP address and can be affected by numerous factors. There is no universal sender reputation score, as each inbox service provider will analyze sender reputation differently based on their own criteria and algorithms.

Yotpo can confirm when an email is delivered to a recipient’s inbox, but not where in the inbox it landed. Once an email is sent from Yotpo, the emails are processed according to the rules and procedures of the inbox service providers. Inbox service providers don’t share information back with Email Service Providers (such as Yotpo) about where an email lands once delivered to the recipient. Inbox folders, such as promotions, spam, or junk, are still considered to be part of the inbox.

Please note:

Тhe Gmail Promotions tab is not the same as a junk folder. Marketing emails are intended to go to the Promotions tab as they are promotional in nature. Studies have shown there is no decrease in engagement for emails that go to the Promotions tab.

Each email campaign has a dedicated analytics page where you can track its overall performance, along with its delivery and deliverability insights. To learn more about email deliverability analytics, see Understanding Email Deliverability Analytics. This article will help you understand key metrics, identify possible issues, and optimize future campaigns for better email deliverability.

You can use link shorteners in email, but doing so can negatively impact your email deliverability. Link shorteners like Bit.ly are commonly used by spammers, leading to a poor reputation for these URLs. Including such links in your emails may result in increased blocking and filtering. Instead, we recommend using full URLs to the real destinations.

Authenticating a dedicated sending domain adds a layer of security and credibility to the emails you send to customers. This enhances deliverability, strengthens brand credibility, and removes via yotpomail.com from the "From" field in emails. In addition, domain authentication is necessary to comply with the requirements of major inbox service providers like Gmail and Yahoo.

You can follow the instructions in Adding and Authenticating a Sending Domain.

After adding a new authenticated sending domain, it’s necessary to warm up the infrastructure. The warm-up involves initially sending fewer emails to highly engaged audiences, gradually increasing the volume, and easing the engagement limitations over time. This approach allows your domain to build up a strong reputation. To learn more, see Warming Your New Domain Infrastructure.

The key metrics include:

• Click-through rate: The percentage of unique clicks out of all delivered emails

• Open rate: The percentage of unique opens out of all delivered emails

• Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribed out of all delivered emails

• Soft bounce rate: The percentage of soft-bounced emails out of all sent emails. Soft-bounced emails have been rejected for a temporary reason which may be resolved in the future. For example, when the mailbox is full.

• Hard bounce rate: The percentage of hard-bounced emails out of all sent emails. Hard-bounced emails are rejected for a permanent reason. For example, when the email address is invalid.

• Spam report rate: The percentage of emails marked as spam out of all delivered emails

This issue is likely occurring due to internal email filtering set up on your inbox service provider. Sometimes sending from your domain but from a server you don’t own may cause inbox service providers to view this as a spoofing attempt and block the email to protect your brand.

To fix this, ensure that your dedicated sending domain is properly configured and have your IT team add your sending domain to the allowlist - a rule that permits emails to get delivered to the inbox. This will help ensure that emails sent from your domain are not mistakenly blocked.

A blocklist is a list of IP addresses or domains that a blocklist operator has identified as sources of spam. However, not all blocklists carry the same weight. Reputable blocklists like Spamhaus have a significant impact, while smaller ones typically have less influence and won't cause bounces. The effect of being blocklisted depends on whether the recipient's inbox service provider uses that specific blocklist to filter spam.

Yotpo continuously monitors all major blocklists around the clock and takes appropriate action to address any blocks that could affect deliverability.

Spam traps are email addresses used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blocklist operators to identify senders who aren't adhering to email best practices. These email addresses may have been legitimate, but are now abandoned or invalid.

To avoid spam traps:

• Don’t email purchased lists or any lists for which you haven’t obtained consent

• Regularly remove unengaged or outdated subscribers from your sending list

• Never email a list you haven’t emailed in over a year

For detailed information about Gmail’s and Yahoo’s new sender requirements, see Preparing for Google and Yahoo’s New Sender Requirements.

To check if you comply with Gmail’s requirements,  sign up for Google Postmaster Tools. To check if you comply with Yahoo’s requirements, sign up for Yahoo Senders Hub.

For brands without authentication set up, Yotpo will limit sending to no more than 5,000 contacts per day to protect your sender reputation. To avoid this limitation, please authenticate your dedicated sending domain and set up a DMARC record. To learn more, see Adding and Authenticating a Sending Domain.