How to improve email deliverability

Emails are one the most common tools used in Brokerkit when communicating with leads and agents and sending them in bulk or via campaigns is one of the most effective outreach tools we have. This article will assist you with troubleshooting email deliverability issues.

Brokerkit sends single emails to a lead/agent via your Gmail or Microsoft account, whereas we have a separate email server for bulk and campaign emails so that you can avoid hitting sending limits in your Gmail or Microsoft account.

Your north star metric at the beginning is not hires, but replies and booked meetings. This means you have to test your list's quality and email approach / copywriting.

Troubleshooting steps to improve email deliverability:

1. Assess your account:

   1. Is this a new email account or address?  Newer email addresses will have lower trust scores, so you need to start by sending a lower number of emails and increase this over time.

   2. Warming up a new account for 2-3 weeks by sending emails to recipients who open/click/reply to emails will greatly improve the trust score.
2. Optimizing your data/recipient list
   1. Make sure you have good data to start with.
      1. If you are looking for experienced agents, we strongly recommend you start with an MLS data source to ensure you have a good list of productive agents for outreach.
   2. Verify the recipient's email is valid with a tool like an Email Verifier for single emails or NeverBounce for lists

   3. Where did you get the email list (are the emails valid, is the list full of viable prospects)?

   4. Have the contacts opted-in to the list? Emailing contacts who opted into a form (e.g. an event invite) will greatly improve deliverability

   5. Ensure you have cleaned your email list and removed leads who have previously opted out of emails. 
   6. Your email list is too large. Many ESPs (Email Service Providers) can begin to throttle or have emails soft bounce due to rapid increases in email sending. In this case, use labels or search parameters to segment your list into smaller groups and use more personalized messaging to them.
   7. Be sure to use Advanced Search and/or Labels to cut down your full list into segments (e.g. by production level, company, or city) so that you can send more personal messages. Sending highly personalized targeted messages vs. generic email blasts will greatly increase your response rate.
3. Optimizing Content 
   
   1. Optimize your subject line with the  Subject Line Grader
   2. Optimize the email body content with the Email Grader
   3. Don't use HTML in your email
   4. Fewer links or no links increases deliverability
   5. Don't use links that redirect such as a link shortener like bit.ly
   6. Review the content for spamminess in the subject and body with a tool like Mail-Tester
   7. Make it personal. Many recipients will not read emails that appear to be system-generated or that may look like promotions.
   8. Go with text-based conversational messages that look like you sat down and sent the person a 1 on 1 direct message over HTML formatted messages in a newsletter style. Short personal conversation messages will always have a much higher response rate. Aim to keep conversational emails below 50 words.
   9. Send multi-touch (12-15 touch) multi-channel (emails, texts, tasks for calls, tasks for social media touches) recruiting campaigns vs. single bulk emails to increase response rates
4. Optimize Sending
   1. Optimize  the  sending  time with Email Time Optimizer
      1. In general try to email people between 8 am - 11 am in their time zone.

   2. The frequency you send large quantities of emails (emails are more likely to be filtered as spam if there is a recent spike, especially for newer accounts).

   3. It is recommended that all newer customers “warm up the sending IP addresses” by sending bulk emails to smaller lists initially and increase the list size gradually to increase deliverability 
5. Removing emails from the Brokerkit suppression list
   1. Ask the agents/leads to check their Spam folder to see if the email is there
   2. If the address is correct/valid and the emails are not going to spam, search for the lead/agent in Brokerkit and send them an individual email, asking them to reply if they received it.
   3. If the agent is getting individual emails, but not getting mass emails, it is possible that the email address for the recipient has been added to the suppression list in our email server. Email addresses can be added to our suppression list for a variety of reasons such as they clicked an unsubscribe link or prior emails to that address bounced.
   4. If you believe that the email address might have been added to our suppression list, then please submit a help request to help@getbrokerkit.com to see if the email is in our suppression list and have it removed.
6. Optimize Sending domain 
   
   1. If your email sending domain (the domain is the part after the @ sign in your email and before the .com, .net,...) has a bad reputation from past bulk emailing from other tools, you can get another variation of your domain (e.g. acme.net vs. acme.com), add that domain to your G Suite or Office 365 tenant, and create some email accounts using this other sending domain and be sure to forward replies back to the desired email account.

How To Use The Engagement Filter to Track Engagement

Brokerkit provides a robust set of filters in the advanced search options available, and reviewing the Engagement filter can be especially helpful in tracking email and text. You can use these filters to remove or archive leads with minimal engagement, or to remove those who have marked previous communication as spam. 

If you have any other questions, please feel free to email our support team at help@getbrokerkit.com