How to Test Email Deliverability?
Email marketing is one of the cost effective tool widely used by B2B marketers..It is the most cost-effective marketing channel for delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. To optimize the email marketing efforts, B2B marketer do A/B testing of different elements of email like email subject lines, email design etc. Testing email deliveraibility is also equally important. If your email does not make till recipients's inbox then all your email marketing efforts may go waste. If you don't test email deliverability your email could land in the recipient’s junk folder. Here are different types of email deliverability tests that you can run at regular interval to improve your email deliiverability
Seed list testing
A seed list needs to be there before running any email deliverability tests. A seed list is a list of email addresses that you will send an email to before you send the email to actual email list. A seed list allows you to test the email across different email clients and devices
Seed list testing is done to measure whether ISP accepts your emails or not. Many ISPs and networks have different levels of filtering. Seed list testing is run by sending campaign emails to seed list at different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and networks before sending it to actual email list to verify mailer delivery across various ISPs. This helps to identify where the emails are landing. After sending emails to seed list you need to verify which emails landed in Inbox,junk folder.
Content filtering testing
Through content filtering testing you can filter your email messages according to certain content filters such as Barracuda, Cloudmark, MessageLabs, Again like seed list testing mentioned above , you need to send emails to seed list to evaluate the content filtering test results to make sure emails are landing in inbox.
IP and domain black list testing
This testing is run to check if your IP address , domain is listed on anti spam database.This involves checking IP address, domain across various blacklist provider to ensure your email lands in recipients inbox.
Authentication testing
Authentication testing is run to verify whether your emails are passing through SPF and DKIM checks. Authentication is a way to prove that your email is not forged. Both SPF and DKIM are email authentication technologies which helps ISPs to control inbound spam. These technologies validates that you have permission to send email by using supplied IP address and domain. Adding SPF record to your domain allows receiving servers such as Gmail,Yahoo etc to verify the identity of your emails for senderID authentication. These email authentication technologies are like passport to reach to recipients inbox.
