Having difficulty delivering email into Yahoo and you don’t know why?
We’ll help you get a better understanding and explain why.
You’ll find most email marketers want to deliver their email marketing messages to ISPs that are the most difficult to deliver emails to. This has always been the case, since I can remember. In 2001 it was Hotmail, then in 2005 it changed to AOL and now it’s Yahoo. You may ask yourself why? Why are email marketers so intent on sending their email marketing messages and offers to ISPs that are the hardest to deliver their messages to? The answer, although not always very logical, is always the same – competition, or the lack thereof. If there are fewer email advertisements being deliver to Yahoo users, there is less competition to deal with and conversion rates and ROI are greater.
So now let’s take a look at why it is more complicated and difficult to deliver your email marketing messages to Yahoo users. Yahoo basically uses engagement statistics to determine domain and IP reputation and how many concurrent connections or emails they will allow you to deliver to their users, if they allow you to connect and deliver any emails whatsoever.
OK, so what determines your user engagement statistics?
- Opens – The number of users who open and read the email message you send.
- Clicks – The number of users who click on the links within your email marketing messages.
Basically, if your subscribers aren’t opening and clicking on the email campaigns that you are sending to them, they’re not active users and, hence, are not engaged. Yahoo looks at your user engagement and determines how they will treat your incoming emails based partially on these factors.
Besides opens and clicks, Yahoo also gathers statistics on the following criteria:
- Hard Bounces – The total number of unknown or dead Yahoo user emails you attempt to deliver.
- Continued Hard Bounces – If you send to the same dead Yahoo email addresses over and over.
- Unsubscribes – How many of the people you send messages to unsubscribe.
- Complaints – How many of the people you send messages to click the “spam” button.
- Habitual Complaints – How many people who click the “spam” button continue to receive emails from you.
What you can do to improve your deliverability to Yahoo users
- Clean and validate your entire email list – Why try to send to dead email addresses? More Info
- Remove inactive users – Review your stats to see which users have opened and clicked. Remove users who are not engaged with your email messages. In other words, if you have sent 6 emails over a period of time to a single user and they have not opened or clicked on any of them, move these individuals out of your email marketing database, into an inactive users file, and do not send to them.
- Content – Make sure you are sending relevant content to your users. If your response rates (opens and clicks) are poor, consider reviewing what types of information and offers you are sending. Scrutinize what you can do to make your content more engaging, relevant and accessible for your users.
- IP and Domain Reputation – Constantly review your IP and domain reputation. There are many websites which will provide valuable and relevant information in this regard. A simple Google search will help you determine which sites are the best to use.
The details above should provide you a place to start, when trying to understand and get a handle on why delivering your email marketing messages to Yahoo is much more difficult. If you find yourself stuck and simply can’t figure it out, give us a call or send us an email. We’ll be more than happy to try and give you an outside perspective on what you’re missing.