How to Deal with Yahoo Email Delivery Issues

How to Deal with Yahoo Email Delivery IssuesA client recently asked us about some challenges he was having with Yahoo email deliverability (i.e., getting through Yahoo mail). I decided to interview a deliverability specialist within one of the major email service providers about the issue. Things change, and I wanted to get the latest scoop.

According to the deliverability specialist, Yahoo is one of those Internet Service Providers (ISPs) I’ve referred to in a previous article I wrote about email deliverability and ISP reputation that uses engagement statistics to determine email reputation. Your email reputation affects whether the ISP decides to let your email into their network. Engagement statistics are the email metrics that determine whether your subscribers are opening and clicking on the content in your emails. Basically, if your subscribers aren’t opening and clicking, they’re not active users and, hence, are not engaging.

In addition to engagement metrics, I would assume that Yahoo also looks at the following for your email campaigns to determine your email reputation:

  • How many subscribers bounce
  • How many bounce over and over again
  • How many unsubscribe
  • How many lodge spam complaints.

There are certainly many more metrics that ISPs look at, but these are the most important ones to get a handle on first.

To improve your Yahoo email deliverability, we recommend beginning with the following:

  • Inactives — Analyze your list to determine who is inactive (e.g., hasn’t opened or clicked in an appropriate amount of time, such as the last 6 months for a monthly newsletter); conduct a reengagement campaign, and then remove those who don’t reengage. Click here to link to one of our previous articles on what you need to do to reengage your inactive users.
  • Subscribers who are leaving — Analyze your level of bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints to determine if your levels are above average. If they are, figure out why. Usually the problems are rooted in the extent to which you are building a permission-based email list. If you’re not getting explicit permission to add people to your list through either single or, optimally, double opt-in practices, you’ll want to start there.
  • Content — Take a good hard look at your content in the context of your engagement metrics. If your unique open rates are going down over time – even when adjusted for the inactive users – consider what you can do to make your content more relevant, engaging, and accessible for your audience. If you have any attributes about your subscribers, use them and incorporate dynamic content to personalize the content even more.
  • IP address — If you send a lot of email, consider getting a dedicated Internet Protocol (IP) address, which will allow you to take complete ownership of your email reputation. Many email marketers use a tool that puts multiple clients on a single IP address. So while you may have great permission-based, professional email practices, others don’t. Those who don’t follow good email marketing best practices pollute the sending IP address, and you suffer. By getting a dedicated IP address, you can build your own reputation. Be careful, though – you’ll live and die by your own sword!

If you’re not sure whether you have any deliverability issues – or if you know you have problems but aren’t quite sure why – get a quick check with FulcrumTech’s Deliverability Essentials. Of course, always feel free to contact us or give us a call at 215-489-9336 for a more comprehensive analysis. We’re here to help.




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