How to: Email deliverability

Introduction

SurveyOptic can send emails for a number of different purposes including respondent invites and reminders, survey manager emails, bulk report sending and to audiences. When sending these critical emails, deliverability is a key concern. When we say ‘deliverability’, we are referring to emails reaching their intended destination successfully.

The way in which emails are constructed and managed contribute to “sender scores”. Following best practise will protect the sender score and ensure high levels of deliverability. Where best practise is not followed, sender scores can be marked down and emails are more likely to be blocked or marked as spam.

Interaction

Interaction with emails is the best way to retain a high sender score. So whenever an email is sent, it is important to maximise the likelihood that the recipient interacts with it. Ideally this would come in the form of a ‘click’ on a link. Failing this, a long ‘dwell time’ (email open for a long time in the email application) will contribute to sender scores as they suggest the recipient is reading the email content.

Some email servers (such as Microsoft) monitor interaction with emails. If no interaction is registered in the first few 100 emails, emails from the sender will start to be blocked.

Use of links

Many of the emails sent through SurveyOptic have the option to include a contextual link which directly relates to the purpose of the email. The most obvious example of this is a survey link for invite emails. Other links may also be useful to include such as the ‘status page’ for manager emails and external links to supporting documentation around a survey or consultation.

Received in error

Another very important inclusion is a link to use if the email is believed to have been received in error. This is often caused by errors in imported data. By including a link like this with supporting copy to explain what actions a recipient may need to take, respondents are more likely to interact with the email when received in error. By pointing this link to a contact form (and linking an id or email in the link so it can be tracked back) these errors can be tracked back and resolved within your data set. Supporting copy should also be used to explain the link and.

Quality content

Ensuring the content quality is high will give your emails the best chance to be interacted with. Engaging content will encourage recipients to read the email. Relevant, timely, useful links will encourage recipients to click.

Emails should also be personalised wherever possible. Email servers will perform quality checks on incoming mail and email that is not personalised and sent out in bulk has a high risk of being marked as ‘spam’. In the context of survey invite emails for example, substitutions can be used to dynamically insert the name of the recipient (where you have access to this data).

Staged distribution

Another useful practise for any large email campaign is to use a ‘warm up’ or small test run (a dozen or so) to ensure emails are being delivered successfully. This protects against the risk of sending emails out in high volumes to bad addresses or recipients that are not set-up to receive the emails, which could damage your sender score. Errors can be discovered in a small controlled test run and once it is confirmed that emails are being received successfully emails can then be sent in bulk.

IT system awareness

Before sending an email campaign it is important to ensure emails will not be blocked or throttled by IT systems. For example, when inviting the employees of an organisation to a survey, the sender address will usually need to be ‘whitelisted’ by the recipients IT team and any other restrictions such as throttling will need to be accounted for.