Email deliverability is of paramount importance here at ClickMail. That’s why we’re vendor agnostic, representing a dozen email service providers (ESPs), not just one. This enables us to match an organization with the ESP that enables the highest email delivery rate for them.

But deliverability requires more than the best- suited email service provider, more than list hygiene, more than a great online sending reputation. In fact, almost every component of email marketing could impact deliverability…even before a subscriber signs up.

This is why, now more than ever, preference centers should be part of your email marketing toolbox.

A preference center lets a subscriber set the guidelines of your relationship with them via email.

When you allow subscribers to self select, segmenting themselves and giving them control over how often they hear from you and with what content, they are more receptive to your emails because your emails are more relevant. Relevance, and therefore engagement, has always been important for email marketing effectiveness. Moving forward it’s going to affect deliverability too.

That’s because major ISPs are starting to monitor email engagement as a way to determine whether or not your emails are spam. Previously, the ISP would only look to see if your email was flagged as spam. Now if it’s not touched, if your email is not interacted with, that tells the ISPs the recipient doesn’t want to hear from you…and if you have enough recipients acting this way, it could affect your future deliverability to that ISP.

Think about it: No longer does someone flag you as spam to mar your reputation. Now they can simply do nothing.

If there’s interaction at the inbox level, you’re good. That tells the ISP your email was welcomed by the recipient, and you’ll continue to be allowed into that inbox. And there’s a ripple effect: If enough people don’t engage, that can reflect universally on the entire domain.

Today’s preference center has to offer more than a choice between plain text and html emails to make a difference. But that’s good for you! The more choices you offer people, the better off you are in the long run, because you can segment and serve up extremely targeted information. Take Barnes and Noble’s extensive email preference center, for example. By offering 21 different newsletters to choose from, B&N can send information on children’s books to only that audience, not annoying the mature nonfiction crowd with promos about literature for the little ones.

You might be wondering how many choices you’ll have to offer. After all, offering 21 different newsletters can mean producing up to 21 different versions of content (we’d recommend using variable content) and that increases your workload, right? The options you offer are ultimately determined by your audience, and fall into one of two buckets:
Content—What do they want to know? Do they want to learn about webinars, or only get your how-to tips newsletter, for example?
Frequency—How often do they want to hear from you? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?

Yes, you are giving the people the control, and that idea might sound painful. You are the marketer. You want to control the relationship, promoting a product, service or event when you want, as you want.

Think of it as short-term pain for long-term gain. When you give the subscriber the control, you gain an increase in relevance which leads to an increase in engagement and therefore an increase in deliverability.

And to circle back to what started this article, deliverability is of paramount importance in the world of email marketing ROI.

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