Getting your emails delivered to your subscribers' inboxes is the surest way to get your content seen, build a base of dedicated fans and boost your email marketing efforts. But it's not always as easy as hitting "send."

Tip: You can find your emails' deliverability (the percentage of emails that did not bounce and were successfully delivered to the inbox) in each email's analytics report.

For a detailed walkthrough on email reports, check How can I see how my emails performed?

Your deliverability chart may look similar to the below screenshot example. If you see that an email's deliverability could be better or is dangerously low in your email analytics dashboard, here are a few things you can do to turn things around.

Authenticating your domain only takes a few simple steps and can help both with your sender reputation and getting your emails delivered.

It verifies that the emails you're sending are from who they say they're from, signaling to your subscribers’ email servers that you’re not impersonating someone else. This reduces the chances of bouncing and can really increase an email's deliverability score.

To learn how to do this in Flodesk, follow the steps in Authenticate your domain via DKIM.

When you migrate your email list to Flodesk from your previous email marketing provider, make sure to upload a CSV of only your active subscribers.

Tip: It's a good best practice to keep a copy of all your subscribers, including bounces and unsubscribes, from your previous email marketing provider in a CSV file for reference.

To learn more, check out How do I move my subscriber list from my old provider to Flodesk?

Sending emails to a purchased list not only violates our acceptable use policy, it also hurts your sender reputation and deliverability. Purchased or scraped lists may contain nonexistent or expired email addresses with a high chance of bouncing back. They also result in a lot of spam complaints since the subscribers never opted in.

Always ask subscribers to explicitly opt into your list before sending them emails.

When you start sending emails to your subscribers from a new email marketing provider, you’ll want to warm up your email/IP address to establish a good sender reputation, maintain a healthy deliverability and avoid the spam folder.

Start by sending smaller volumes to your most engaged readers, and gradually increase the number of recipients, especially if you have uploaded a large list via a CSV file.

Group your subscribers into segments based on their interests, preferences and where they are in your customer lifecycle. And then send relevant content to each segment.

By doing that, you can increase engagement rates, avoid the spam folder, and increase your emails’ deliverability by sending to active, engaged subscribers. A triple-win!

Learn how to better organize your subscribers in How to use Segments.

Over time, there will be people on your email list who may be less engaged with your content. If you keep emailing subscribers who don’t seem to be opening your emails, it lowers your engagement rate, impacting your sender reputation and, therefore, your deliverability.

Consider sending subscribers who haven't opened an email in the last six months a re-engagement campaign. Remove them from your list if they remain inactive.

To identify your inactive subscribers from six or more months ago, check out Filtering your subscribers.

​Bonus: Avoid spam filters

Although emails going to spam do not impact your deliverability score, going to spam will severely reduce your open rates and prevent your emails from being seen by a large portion of your audience.

Spam filters on your subscribers’ email servers check the copy, the subject line and the general design of the email (to name a few things).

For an overview of spam triggers and best practices to follow, check out Common reasons emails may land in the spam folder.

Follow these steps to boost the deliverability of your emails:

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