5 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability This Holiday Season

The holidays are a great time to be sending emails, as customers are already in buying mode. You’ll likely have some products to promote for holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday. So how can you keep your email out of the spam box and ensure you’re reaching subscribers’ inboxes this season?

As many companies will want to take advantage of this lucrative time of year, your audience’s inboxes are going to be fuller than ever. A focus on email deliverability is key to ensure your promotional email gets opened, as you don’t want to miss out on the biggest time of the year for consumer consumption/spending.

Slipping through the your customer’s spam filter and improving email deliverability is easy if you know how to do it. Keep reading to find out all about holiday spam, the challenges you may face, and our top strategies for improving email deliverability to ensure your holiday email doesn’t hit the spam folder.

Don’t Be Holiday Spam – Reach Inboxes This Holiday Season

Holiday spam essentially refers to the high volume of emails sent around the holiday season, and it’s every company's worst nightmare when ensuring email deliverability.

It’s more difficult to get noticed when every company is sending out emails at the same time. But there’s no need to despair - beehiiv is here to help you avoid holiday spam and reach as many inboxes as possible this year. Let’s dive in and optimize your deliverability and open rates!

What Are the Challenges With Sending a Holiday Season Email?

Sending a holiday email doesn’t come without challenges. There are many factors to bear in mind when sending out your newsletter this season, as you won’t have many chances to fully engage your subscriber list within this brief window.

Challenges include the following:

• Making sure your email stands out against the crowd

• Achieving the best subject line for a good click-through rate (CTR)

• Optimizing your preview text

• Ensuring email deliverability is top of your list

Overcoming these challenges is key when ensuring email deliverability. The last thing you want is to create a beautiful holiday email only for it to be hidden away in your subscribers’ spam folders or filtered inboxes.

5 Strategies to Improve Email Deliverability

So what are our top five strategies for improving email deliverability? Continue reading to find out!

Send Emails to Relevant Subscriber Lists Using A/B Testing

Improving email deliverability starts with ensuring your email lists are relevant. If you’re sending out newsletters and receiving a very low open rate, this could mean that you’re likely to hit the spam folder the next time you email that subscriber.

To create the most relevant subscriber list, you can set up an A/B test within beehiiv to test out different email lists. If one list has a considerably higher open rate/engagement rate than the other, you’ll know to prioritize whichever list provided better results.

Setting up an A/B test in beehiiv is easy! Check out our blog for a how-to guide that will talk you through exactly how to do this.

Make Sure Your Email is Engaging

Now that you’ve got relevant email lists, it’s equally as important to create a holiday season email that is going to engage your audience.

Emails that typically engage audiences have hyperlinks weaved in throughout the content, and they share relevant information that the specific audience you’re sending your email to will enjoy. An email is more likely to hit a spam folder if the content within it seems unengaging or spammy.

If you’re struggling with the content of your newsletter, check out our 7 ways to create an engaged newsletter via our blog!

Send the Most Relevant Content Possible

How do you engage more with your audience? Well, the simple answer is to send content that will be the most relevant, helpful, and timely.

One way to do that is with polls. We’ve recently launched a polls feature on beehiiv that allows you to insert a poll directly into the editor when creating your newsletter. This is a great way of gaining insights into what your subscribers enjoy, and will inform your future newsletters to make them more engaging.

You could ask your audience what they think about new product updates, or what they think about your regular newsletter. You can learn more about using polls in your beehiiv newsletter via our website!

Build Strong IP/Domain Reputation

Another strategy for improving email deliverability this holiday season is by building up a strong IP/domain reputation. Your holiday newsletter will be sent from a specific IP address, which will have built up its own reputation based on how previous emails sent from it have performed.

The same works for domain reputation - if the domain in the email address you’re sending the newsletter from has a high spam score, it’s likely that future emails sent from this domain will hit the spam folder.

You can improve IP and domain reputation by sending relevant emails to engaged subscriber lists, and ensuring you’re not sending a high quantity of emails without good open rates. Quality is always better than quantity when it comes to sending a good newsletter and keeping IP/domain reputation strong.

Avoid Linking To Spammy Websites

Spammy links are a surefire way of hitting a subscriber’s spam folder. Some websites are added to URL block lists as a way of protecting users from being scammed by phishing sites, and if you link to these sites in your holiday email it’s likely to impact email deliverability.

These kinds of sites are usually easy to spot, but if you want to be extra sure you can always run your links through a URL block list checker such as Check Site.

Don’t Use Too Many Images

An important step in ensuring your email doesn’t hit those dreaded spam folders is to avoid the overuse of images in your emails. Images are a great way of breaking up content in your newsletters, but they’re likely to flag spam filters if you’re using too many. We recommend sticking to an 80:20 ratio in your emails, with 80% text to 20% images. This balance should prevent your emails from being sent to your customer’s spam folder.

You should also avoid formatting your email as one big image. Emails formatted in this way are likely to set off a spam filter, as spam emails are often structured as one big image. To combat this, spam filters have been designed to prevent emails with overuse of images from reaching inboxes.

To create your holiday email, you can use the handy image features within beehiiv to break up the content. Simply click the plus on the left-hand side of the screen while using beehiiv to add different elements, including images, HTML snippets, and other great options to break up the content within your email.

Avoid Spam Words

Another way you can keep your emails from being labeled as holiday spam is by carefully monitoring the language you’re using in your newsletters. Sale/promotional content is known for triggering spam filters/filtered inboxes. Here are a few words that are known to trigger spam filters/filtered inboxes:

• ‘Sale’

• ‘Sales’

• ‘Promotion’

• ‘Free gifts’

• ‘Giveaway’

• ‘Prize’

You should also avoid using words that make big promises that are unlikely to be realistic. Here are a few examples of inflated language that we’d recommend you avoid:

• ‘Guaranteed results’

• ‘Get out of debt’

• ‘Risk-Free’

• ‘Once in a lifetime’

• ‘Big cash bonus’

This kind of language can be seen as untrustworthy, and may flag spam filters in order to protect the subscriber from spam/phishing emails. Avoiding these types of words/language will make your holiday newsletters less likely to trigger spam filters, and encourage your emails to land safely in your subscribers’ inboxes.

Closing Thoughts on Service Email Deliverability

Now that you’ve read this article, you should be super confident in sending out your holiday/Christmas email this year. You’ve got the best strategies behind you for ensuring great email deliverability, and you’ll avoid being part of the dreaded holiday spam.

Sign up for free with beehiiv to start creating your holiday email. You can get started with the many great benefits of our Starter Plan, or check out some of the advanced features such as A/B testing, custom domains, and 3D analytics with our paid plans.

For more tips on email deliverability, you can view a full list over on our blog. With this article and the guide you’ve just read, your holiday email is sure to be opened and enjoyed by your engaged subscriber list!