Ever heard of the statement – “Delivering emails to the Inbox is a challenge“. Well if you are a Job Site, I am sure your response will be – “Tell me about it.” Every mailbox provider be it; Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook have all developed their own anti-spam technologies to safeguard users from unwanted email. Though their intention is largely good, it eventually acts as a bane for Email Senders. Knowledge of these rules becomes of utmost importance in getting a higher email deliverability percentage.
And thus in this article, we will tell you all about these anti-spam bodies, their rules and 5 golden ways to increase email deliverability.
Let’s start already, shall we?
So What are these Anti Spam Rules? Are they even Relevant?
So before I even start off writing about these Anti Spam Rules, please note- Accuracy of these rules is usually around 99%. While that might sound like great accuracy, there are tons of emails sent every day. So this puts a lot of genuine emails in the line of fire.
Predominantly there are 3 Rules/ Laws you must be aware of before we go in-depth of Email Deliverability.
- GDPR- The General Data Protection Act (GDPR) has been introduced by the European Union to safeguard its citizens’ interests through the standardization of mechanisms and data privacy laws across all industries. It aims at empowering EU citizens to protect their personal information and to make them aware of what data is held by various institutions.
- CAN-SPAM- The CAN-SPAM Act established a set of rules for commercial electronic emails and messages. It gives recipients the right to easily request that a business stop sending them emails and outlines penalties for violations. It facilitates or confirms a commercial transaction that the recipient already has agreed to.
- CASL (Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act): The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation impacts commercial electronic messages (CEM) sent to Canadian residents and from within Canada itself. It does not apply to commercial messages that are routing through Canada. The toughest email legislation in North America, CASL is focused on consent, identification and unsubscribe processes. And it impacts any global marketer who is sending a commercial email to someone who resides in Canada.
As a good email sender, we strive to be in the Inbox. Understanding each of the spam filters is a complex job, but there is an easy way to achieve the best deliverability. Any discussion on deliverability revolves around reputation.
Which brings us to our first way to achieve higher deliverability for your job emails to the candidates – The IP slash Domain Reputation Score!
#1: Maintain your IP credibility/ IP Warmup
Spam is becoming an increasing nuisance for users as well as for your job board. Your relevant alert emails may be landing in spam and a major reason might be poor IP reputation.
According to Statista, the spam volume globally from January 2014 to September 2017 was as high as 71% and no lower than 52%.
This is due to the increased cold and promotional emailing by companies. One of the major contributors of spam is also buying of unsolicited email lists. Which is why as a solution, ISP filters are constantly waging war against it.
To do so, they assess the IP of incoming emails to see how trustworthy they are.
If your IP seems suspicious, there’s a good chance that your email job alert won’t reach the inbox.
So everybody wants to build their IP credibility! But How?
Many times the answer to a very complex problem is often a much simpler one. To build your IP Reputation, the best thing you can do is – Start Slow!
You can start slow and steady with an email campaign sending small batches of emails to individuals who you know are and will engage. Once an ISP sees that recipients are opening and engaging with those emails, your IP should become more trustworthy. Then over time, you can gradually increase the volume of your emails. This is also known as IP Warmup and is one of the best ways for your Job Board to build and maintain a great IP reputation.
Seems a bit way too simple? Have a look at our Detailed Guide to increase IP Reputation and Sender Reputation Score for a Job Search Engine.
#2: Use Email Opt-Ins
Email Opt-ins in the most simpler terms means that the user has given you permission to send them emails. In the most common ways, your ‘Subscribe us’ Button or a checkbox in your lead generation form is a type of single opt-in methodology to seek a user’s permission to send them an email.
Using an email opt-in ensures that your ISP has a record that your candidate has interacted with your job board and has, in fact, agreed to receive emails from your job board.
Thus making Opt-Ins as one of the best methods to ensure your job alert emails do not land up in your candidate’s inbox. Single Opt-ins are easier to implement and are used widely, but lately double opt-ins have shown much better success rates.
Do keep the following points in mind-
- Anyone can add any email to your list (including a spam trap) if you use single opt-in but that’s not a case with double opt-ins.
- Many ESPs use separate servers to send emails to double opt-in and single opt-in subscribers – the double opt-in servers tend to have a better reputation and deliverability.
- Double opt-in subscribers have shown more interest in getting emails from you.
#3: Have a Consistent Sender Name
This might sound too obvious, but trust me many email senders not only experiment with their subject lines but also with their sender names. Having an inaccurate sender name is not only misleading and can get you a lot of unsubscribers but is also in direct violation of the CAN-SPAM act and can get hefty fines imposed on you. Your sender information should clearly outline who you are and your company’s name.
One of the best practices for sending business emails is to use your business domain for sending out your business emails.
Another practice you must follow for you to not land up in spam is being consistent with your sender name. If you are sending emails via [email protected], keep using the same ID. If a user sees your emails and recognizes it immediately, the chances of the email landing up in spam reduces.
Please Note: If you are sending a job alert email, you can send the email from an ID like [email protected]. Similarly, a newsletter email can be sent from [email protected] or [email protected]. This gives the user an idea of what the email contains while also having your domain name in it.
#4: Avoid Spam Trigger Words
We started this article by talking about certain anti-spam bodies and rules. Those rules might sound different in various definitions but all of them have one thing in common. They all have spam filters which are often triggered due to the usage of certain words.
We all know that it’s your subject line which is often a deciding factor whether your email is gonna land up in the inbox or not. But very few of us actually know of those certain set of keywords which can actually flag the spam filters. Called as trigger words, they are known to cause problems and increase the chances of your email getting caught in a Spam trap.
By avoiding these words in your email subject lines, you can dramatically decrease the chances of your Job Emails getting flagged by spam filters.
Here are some of the common Spam Trigger words which are most likely to get flagged by spam traps.
- Double your
- Earn $
- Make $
- Earn extra cash
- Earn per week
- Expect to earn
- Extra income
- Home employment
- Homebased business
- Income from home
- Make money
#5: Use Data Segmentation
Now this is the final golden rule that you must follow for a higher email deliverability rate. But like it is said, last but certainly not the least – Data Segmentation is as crucial a step as any in the list. Data Segmentation is when you segment your candidates based on their activities. And then start sending them emails which are most relevant to them.
Sending segmented data to your candidates makes sure they receive very relevant emails ensuring higher engagement with your email. This gets you in a win-win situation where the user interacts with your email and thus giving you a better ROI.
Simultaneously, it also gets you a higher Sender Reputation Score due to the increased engagement. And as we have discussed previously, this score directly affects the deliverability of your emails.
Here’s how you can effectively segment your data.
As soon as a user has signed up to your job board, completed their profile building and started receiving job alerts half the battle is done. You can then collect feedback from users on the quality and relevance of job alerts being sent to them. Even if 1% of users respond, it still gives a signal for improvisation.
We’ve even seen this done by some brands in real-time with upvote (relevant job) and downvote (irrelevant job) buttons on every job which can help tailor your messaging and content to that particular user.
If a user has signed up, but not uploaded a resume or has not applied for a job, target these users with specific nudges to complete the action. Gamification is a great help here.
User activity on job boards is usually very high in the first few days when the user is searching for a job. Knowing that the user has accepted a job offer and is no longer looking is very important so that you can target the user with different content than job alerts.
For example, you can now send the users mails like – Salary comparison, How to make it large in a new role, goal setting, tracking, etc. This, in turn, reduces user churn. Another way is to ask a user who’s not looking for a job anymore if he or she wishes to snooze emails for a period of 6 months and resume emailing them again at that point of time. So, you are not losing the user completely, but also not getting dinged by the ISPs for emailing unengaged users.
Email Deliverability is not rocket science but is still an important one. Especially in times like these when the online attention span of users has reduced drastically, writing relevant emails is a must.
Hitting inbox every time might just be a tedious approach for many but it is as relevant as any other business practice. In this article, I tried to summarise five golden rules which if done properly will definitely increase your job emails and job alerts deliverability rate.
Do you know of any other practices which have helped you improve your Email Deliverability? Have you tried the mentioned best practices? Did you see any changes? If so, let us know in the comments below.
Thank you for Reading.
Other Related Links
Check if emails from your domain are landing in Spam – Email Blacklist Tool
