Your email delivery rate — the percentage of email messages that reach your contacts’ inboxes — is important to monitor due to its direct impact on your marketing ROI. When contacts don’t receive your emails, they can’t open them, click on your links or purchase your products or services.

While Ontraport protects its sender reputation by implementing email standards to maintain stellar delivery rates, there are specific steps you can take in your emails, or by using additional services and managing your contacts, can that maximize your email marketing results.

Check out this Ontraport University lesson on email deliverability tips:

Table of contents

How to write copy for good delivery
Copy plain text HTML
No raw URLs
Only repeat links up to two times in the same message
Keep formatting consistent
Don’t swipe copy
Don’t use URL shorteners
Image-to-text ratio
Character count
Test your email before sending
Sender information
Subject lines and header titles
Engaging call to action
Include allowlisting instructions

How to write copy for good delivery

The content in your emails impacts whether or not your message will be delivered. When you create new emails, follow these copywriting best practices.

Copy plain text HTML

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Always include a plain text version of your email. Spam blockers often prevent the delivery of emails where the plain text and designed versions of the message do not match each other. Providing both copies, and making sure that they match, will improve your email deliverability.

As a best practice, you should click the “Copy from HTML” button after designing a new message or simply adding some copy.

No raw URLs

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Make sure that every link in your message is either hyperlinked or connected to a button. Placing entire URLs into the body of your message can set off spam triggers. The reason for this is scammers will sometimes add deceptive URLs in their messages that actually link to a different page than where the link appears to go. For example, the email message might show www.google.com, but actually be hyperlinked to www.spamwebsite.com.

Only repeat links up to two times in the same message

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If an email contains the same link three or more times, ISPs are likely to filter your message into spam.

Keep formatting consistent

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It is best to avoid switching between bold, underlined and normal text frequently because ISPs view inconsistent text style as a sign that the message may be spam.

Don’t use swipe copy 

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When spammers use swipe copy — sample copy for advertising and sales letters that spammers often copy and paste word-for-word — they ruin the reputation of that copy. Including this copy in your emails will likely decrease your delivery rate.

Don’t use URL shorteners

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Although useful for social media, URL shorteners do more damage than good in email messages. Spammers will use shared domain link shorteners to send people to malware and viruses, which ultimately lands them in the spam folder. If you use the same link shortener as a spammer, your reputation will be lumped in with theirs. As it is a best practice not to include raw urls in messages, there is no advantage to using shortened URLs in your message.

Image-to-text ratio

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Make sure that you have a good ratio between images and message (20% images and 80% text). Spammers often hide links in images within their messages hoping to get unintentional clicks. As a result, spam filters block image-only emails.

Character count

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Your emails should contain at least 500 characters of text. A spam email often only has one to three sentences with a single link, so any email with fewer than 500 characters will likely be caught in the spam filter. On the other hand, an overly long email may not keep your contacts’ attention, so we suggest that you limit your emails to no more than five or six paragraphs.

Test your email before sending

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Once you have drafted your message and implemented best practices, it’s a good idea to test the message before sending it. You can use the “Send Test Email” button on your message editor, or create a contact to manually send yourself the email

Sender information

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Your send from information is the first thing your contacts see in their inbox before opening your email. If your contacts don’t know who they’re getting mail from, they are more likely to delete your message.

Each user in your account has their own send from name and email address saved in their personal profile. But you can also set up role email addresses, such as support@yourcustomdomain.com, to send from as well.

There are three pieces of sender information:

Send from name

This is the name recipients see next to your subject line in their inbox. The send from name is always tied to the send from name saved in a user’s personal profile unless you select the “Custom” option.

• Follow these steps to add new users to your account.

Send from email

This is the address recipients see at the top of your email when they open it.

• Follow these steps to add send from addresses to your account.

Reply to email

The reply to address will be added to the "To" field when a recipient hits reply to your email. It is best if your "reply to" address is clearly related to your business to make sure your subscribers don't mark your messages as spam because they don't recognize your address.

Receiving and responding to messages sent to your "reply to" address is an opportunity to build connections with your list. The more messages you have between you and your subscribers, the more likely their inbox will automatically add you to an allowed list. It's a win-win for both you and your contacts.

This information comes from the reply to address saved in users’ personal profiles unless you select the "Custom" option. Then you can choose a default no reply address that uses the format "noreply+[account ID]@ontramail.com".

“From” name and address

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Your “From” name and address are the first things your contacts see in their inbox before opening your email. If your contacts don’t know who they’re getting mail from, they are more likely to delete your message.

When selecting your “from” name and address, it is important to:

• Keep your “from” information consistent across all communications
• Clarify who you are by including the name of your company or organization in your “from” name
• If possible, use an email address that’s from your own domain
• Don’t include any special characters

“Reply to” address

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Your reply address should be an active mailbox where you can receive replies. It is best if your “reply to” address is clearly related to your business to make sure your subscribers don’t mark your messages as spam because they don’t recognize your address.

Receiving and responding to messages sent to your “reply to” address is an opportunity to build connections with your list. The more messages you have between you and your subscribers, the more likely their inbox is to automatically add you to an allowlist, so it’s a win-win for both you and your contacts.

Subject lines and header titles

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When writing your email subject lines and preheaders, try to avoid spam-trigger words whenever possible. Some are obvious, like “Make Millions Now,” or “$$$,” but even some of the more seemingly harmless words like “Call now” and “Amazing” can catch the spam filter.

If you need to use some of those words, you aren’t completely out of luck — just remember that context is what matters. As spam filters have become more sophisticated, they can now analyze the context in which you use words.

Engaging call to action

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One of the best ways to get your message into inboxes is to start a conversation with your readers through an engaging CTA. You can encourage readers to comment on your blog or Facebook page or to simply reply to your message. A compelling CTA is a great way to boost click-through rates, make your email more engaging and improve delivery rates.

Include allowlisting instructions

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One of the best things you can do to boost engagement is to encourage your contacts to add your address to an allowlist. It is best to include step-by-step instructions on how to add your address in your welcome email to contacts who just subscribed.

• The setup is different for every inbox, so it’s best to give your subscribers instructions for several popular email services. These directions show your subscribers how to mark your email as a safe sender — here’s how Ontraport does it.