The Ultimate Guide To Email Deliverability For Clubs & Associations

Mastering email deliverability is crucial for effective communication for clubs and associations. Discover essential technical aspects like email domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and the importance of a one-click unsubscribe link. Understand how email bounces and spam flags impact your sender reputation, and discover strategies for maintaining a clean and engaged email list.
 

Emails are such a massive part of modern life; I'm sure we've all had some pretty significant life moments delivered straight to our inboxes. I've found out about new jobs, got car loan approval, found out I had graduated from university, and even had a breakup via email, and I'm not alone. Emails have become a really fundamental part of modern human life. For the record, when I broke up with someone via email, I was 13, I didn't have a mobile, and we went to different schools, so I didn't have a lot of other ways to do it. I'm not as heartless as it may first seem. 

My point is that emails are fundamental to how we communicate today. And with good reason, they're an incredibly powerful tool for connecting with your members. They can be personalised, sent to specific individuals or entire groups, and delivered as one-off announcements or regular updates. No matter how you use them, emails are essential for keeping every member informed about what's happening in your organisation.

However, despite their undeniable usefulness, emails come with challenges. In fact, nearly half of all emails sent do not make it to their recipients’ inboxes. That's a significant problem when running a club or association. If you're sending an email alerting your members to an upcoming event, you certainly don't want only half of them getting that crucial message.

So today, let’s take a deep dive into email deliverability and how to ensure your emails reach their mark.

Important Technical Aspects Of Email Deliverability  

When it comes to ensuring your emails get delivered, there are a few technical ducks you need to ensure you have in a row before anything else. 

Email Domain Authentication

Today, if you are going to be sending emails in bulk, as you will need to as someone who runs a club or association, you absolutely need to have domain authentication in place for all your email sending services. Domain authentication is there to prove that you are who you say you are and that you are a trusted sender. These authentication mechanisms are SPF, DKIM and DMARC. 

These mechanisms let email services like Gmail and Outlook know that you are a trustworthy sender and that they should let your email through. If you do not have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC policies, your emails will go straight to spam or bounce altogether.  

When sending bulk emails via Member Jungle, your emails will comply with current authentication requirements and email-sending best practices, which are crucial for enabling you to send bulk emails without being automatically flagged as spam.

One-Click Unsubscribe Link

In 2024, several large email provider companies like Google and Yahoo required that any bulk email senders include a one-click unsubscribe link in their emails. This means that recipients must be able to unsubscribe from your email with just a single click. If your bulk emails do not have a one-click unsubscribe option, Google and other email services will be much more likely to label you as a spam sender, which would be disastrous to your communication with your members. 

The good news here is that Member Jungle provides all of its customers with a one-click unsubscribe button in the footer of all emails, so if you’re a Member Jungle customer, you are already in compliance with these sender requirements. 

Maintaining A Clean Emailing List For Your Club Or Association 

When it comes to sending out large numbers of emails, your “sender reputation” is incredibly important. Your sender reputation is basically how trustworthy email servers perceive you to be as a sender. It is much easier to maintain a good sender reputation than it is to repair a poor one. It’s kind of like if you got labelled a naughty kid in school, teachers would just assume that you were doing something wrong, even if you weren’t, and it’s quite hard to get them to see you in a different light.  

So, when it comes to your sender reputation, it is much better to be proactive and keep your reputation high than it is to attempt to repair your reputation once it’s been damaged. 

So let’s cover the things that damage your sender reputation and what you can do to stop them from doing so.  

Email Bounces & Their Effect On Your Sender Reputation 

Bounces are when your email fails to deliver to your recipient and bounces back to you. This can happen for multiple different reasons, including a wrong email address, a full inbox, an email server being down and a few other things. 

There are two kinds of bounced emails: soft bounces and hard bounces. A soft bounce is when something minor has gone wrong, like a server being down or your email being too large. After a soft bounce, your system will attempt to send an email again. However, too many soft bounces will eventually turn into a hard bounce. 

A hard bounce is where something big has gone wrong, and your email has bounced and will not attempt to resend. This can be caused by an email soft bouncing too many times, a wrong email address or an invalid domain name. 

It doesn’t matter why an email bounces or if it is a hard bounce or a soft bounce; neither is good for your sender reputation, and you should attempt to reduce all bounces. Too many bounced emails will decrease your sender reputation and increase the chances of your emails being marked as spam. We will cover how to reduce bounced emails shortly. 

Spam Emails & Their Effect On Your Sender Reputation 

Email services work hard to protect their users by flagging emails they suspect are spam. They weigh factors like your subject lines and, crucially, your sender's reputation. In fact, email servers judge incoming emails on all the following:

• Low Engagement: Not many people are opening or clicking.
• Too Many Emails/Irrelevant Content: Overwhelm or lack of value.
• Spam Keywords & Formatting
• Poor Sender Reputation: A history of issues.

This means if too few members read your emails, perhaps because you're sending too many, or the content isn't relevant, your emails are more likely to be flagged as spam. Also, using certain words or phrases, like "FREE" or "WIN" (especially in all caps), will almost certainly land your emails in the spam folder.

Finally, your overall sender reputation significantly impacts whether your emails get marked as spam. Too many bounced emails, a lack of proper email authentication, or too many members actively flagging your emails as spam will make it much more likely that email servers will automatically send your messages straight to the junk folder.

The best way to combat this is to send fewer emails, ensure they are relevant to your recipients, avoid using spam-like words, and maintain your sender reputation. 

Maintain A Healthy Email List

Now that we've covered potential email pitfalls, let's look at what you can do. The most crucial step is to maintain a clean email mailing list. This means regularly checking and pruning the addresses you're sending to.

You should consistently review your list, removing emails with very low engagement or those that are hard bouncing. Continuing to send messages to unengaged recipients or to accounts where emails are bouncing will severely damage your sender reputation. Thankfully, the Member Jungle system automatically blocks email addresses with too many bounces, proactively stopping you from inadvertently hurting your reputation.

So, make it a regular habit to perform maintenance on your mailing list. Remove emails with low engagement rates, or if a member hasn't opened an email in a long time. For addresses that are bouncing or have been blocked, reach out to those members to clarify their correct email before unblocking them.

How Member Jungle Can Help With Your Email Deliverability 

Member Jungle offers a variety of features designed to help you maintain excellent email deliverability and a strong sender reputation. We've highlighted some ideas already, but let's explore the specifics.
 

• Automated Safeguards: Member Jungle automatically blocks email addresses that experience too many bounces. This crucial measure prevents you from continuously sending emails to invalid addresses, which can harm your organisation's sender reputation with email providers. Think of it as having a built-in bouncer for your email list.
   
• Email Bounce Reporting: Member Jungle provides a comprehensive report detailing all bounced emails. This report shows each failed email's delivery status and outlines the reasons for non-delivery. This lets you work out exactly what went wrong and quickly and easily fix the issue.
   
• Weekly Blocked Email Report: To ensure you stay informed on the health of your mailing list, you can opt to receive a weekly summary every Monday of any newly blocked emails. This regular update allows you to easily stay on top of your mailing list and keep your sender reputation high.
   
• Individual Profile Status: For quick checks, each member's email block status and engagement rate are clearly displayed on their Member Jungle profile. There's no need to dig around; you can instantly see if their email is blocked.

More Tips & Tricks For Improving Your Email Deliverability 

If you want to know more about Member Jungle’s new bounced email report feature, how it works and how it can help you, please check out Why Your Members May Not Be Receiving Your Emails.