We have been working on a new and improved service called Email Campaign Check that will replace Deliverability Advisor. We will roll the service out beginning April 11, 2023.
The Deliverability Advisor is the next step in the email creation wizard after Content Creation, and you can also access it from the Deliverability Reporting page.
The Deliverability Advisor analyzes your email campaigns and provides highly targeted guidance on how to optimize your content to keep great deliverability at the front of your email marketing strategy. It provides all the information you need to feel confident that you are doing everything you can to uphold the high Emarsys standards of permission-based email marketing.
It is recommended to check the advisor before launching any new campaign to be sure that you follow the best practices and have a better chance of a trouble-free launch.
When using Repeatable Block in a campaign, using the Deliverability Advisor is not supported. Deliverability Advisor uses a test campaign to a random contact to show potential issues. If the repeatable block has the required filter and the Repeatable Block cannot be fed with all the required data, a preview cannot be generated for the campaign, preventing the correct functioning of the Deliverability advisor.
As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about Deliverability:
Introduction
Emarsys runs a number of checks on your email campaigns which are designed to highlight how well you are following our email best practices. With the help of these checks, you can avoid sending email campaigns with obvious deliverability issues. This results in higher engagement and fewer negative metrics (i.e. treated as spam, unsubscribes, complaints).
These checks cover both email content and issues related to email authentication. Any errors or anomalies are flagged so you can immediately take action to correct them.
For a more general overview of deliverability issues, please see: Common deliverability issues.
Preventive Checks
Email Content Checks
These cover all aspects of your email content. Errors or anomalies are flagged in orange (suspected) or red (confirmed) and suggestions for action are provided.
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Subject line wording
This is checked automatically for known spam words and phrases. In case you see a red flag here, change your subject line wording as it will be likely to trigger spam filtering. You can follow our guidelines on Writing A Good Subject Line. -
Subject line length
It is recommended to keep your subject line is as short as possible with max 35 characters, as it could trigger a spam filter. In addition, many email clients simply crop longer subject lines. -
Multi-part message
Every email has an HTML and a text version. It is recommended to have both versions as anti-spam filters can be triggered if there is no text version of the email (spammers typically do not invest in this effort). Furthermore, in the unlikely case that a contact will not be able to see your message in HTML format your message will be still readable. -
Mail message size
It is advised to keep your email size between 15-100KB in size. Bigger emails may result the messages to be truncated in specific email clients and smaller ones may trigger a spam filter. You can read our section on email file size for tips on how to reduce the overall size of your email. -
Link domain consistency
It is highly recommended that you use the same domain for links and sender. If these are not consistent, your emails will be regarded as phishing risks. -
Phishing links
Checks whether your email contains unsecure links. -
Image URLs
Checks whether your individual image URLs are valid. -
Alternative text for images
Checks the alternative texts for your images.1 -
Responsiveness
Checks mobile responsiveness of your message. -
Image domain consistency
If your image URLs have different domains, this will be regarded as suspicious.
1 All Emarsys templates use transparent images called trans.gifs to maintain the height and width of tables. These images contain no alternative text and are therefore being picked up by this check. This is a known issue and will be fixed in a future release. Until then, if you have checked all your images for alternative text and still see this message, you can safely ignore it.
Authentication Checks
These are email authentication and domain. When you want to send an email from a specific domain (e.g. emarsys.com), different checks show whether the email can be authenticated or not. These help to differentiate your emails from spoof emails which pretend to come from legitimate domains.
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DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance)
Every campaign’s sender (sub)domain is checked automatically prior sending. If you receive a red flag for DMARC authentication, that could mean:- Your (sub)domain DNS is not properly configured. Check if there is a DMARC entry in place.
- You are using a different reporting address (rua/ruf) other than your sender (sub)domain.
- You are trying to send with a (sub)domain that is not configured on our side. Check if you are sending with the correct sender (sub)domain, which is configured for sending. Change to the correct (sub)domain and retry.
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Sender policy framework record
Every campaign’s sender (sub)domain is checked automatically prior sending. If you receive a red flag for Sender Policy Framework (SPF) authentication, that could mean:- Your (sub)domain DNS is not properly configured. Check if there is a DMARC entry in place.
- Your (sub)domain has an SPF record, but it has a typo or does not include the correct entries. Check if the SPF record is as per the relevant documentation and has no extra spaces, characters or typos.
- You are trying to send with a (sub)domain that is not configured on our side. Check if you are sending with the correct sender (sub)domain, which is configured for sending. Change to the correct (sub)domain and retry.
In case you are using the correct (sub)domain and this alert persists, it might mean that the (sub)domain is not configured on our side. Let us know in that case in order to proceed with the appropriate setup.
Fixing your deliverability issues
Below we have listed the most common warning messages, with links through to guidelines on how to fix the issues.
Cause
These three messages all refer to issues in your deliverability settings.
Solutions
- First, check that the correct domain is being used for sending. If not, change the domain to your configured one and retry.
- If you have the resources to check your own deliverability settings, please do so, as your domain might not be correctly configured.
- Otherwise contact Emarsys Support.
Cause
Normal marketing messages don't show the URL in a link - they present a call to action for the reader and the link lies behind that. Therefore spam filters can mark such visible links against you.
Solution
Go to the Links page of the email content editor and check your links. Here you can see the display text next to the target URL and take appropriate action to fix the issues. For more information on the risks of inconsistent image URLs, please see: Phishing Links.
Cause
This is a standard syntax check for the URLs inside any <img src=""> tags.
Solution
Go to the Links page of the email content editor and check your links.
If your links look fine and you still get this message, check for leading or trailing blank spaces in the URL. In particular check any external databases if you have copied or pulled the link from there.
- Trailing blank spaces are often overlooked and prevent the image from displaying.
- Leading blank spaces will not prevent the image from displaying but they will continue to trigger this error.
Solution
Add an unsubscribe link to your email, ideally in the footer of the template. For guidelines on unsubscribe links and examples of standard text to use, please see: Best Practices For Opt-in.
Solution
Go to the content editor and open the image properties. Add a suitable alternative text in the field provided.
Remember that alternative text is used by search engines and screen readers so make sure it is relevant and understandable. In HTML-heavy emails, alternative text can help improve your text-to-HTML ratio.
These messages all point to issues in your subject line.
- "Empty subject line"
- "Your subject line is missing."
- "Your subject line is too long; some devices will crop it from the 35th character. Make sure your call to action appears in the front part of your subject line."
- "Some elements of your subject line had been flagged by SpamAssassin. We suggest you try some alternative wording for the following(s): ."
Solution
Open the Email Basics tab of the content editor and rework your subject line, following our guidelines on Writing A Good Subject Line.
These messages all point to issues in your subject line.
- "Email content is missing. Please add content to your email and try again."
- "Empty HTML content"
- "There is a problem with the TEXT part of your email template. Please contact Emarsys Support."
- "We have detected syntax errors in your HTML code. Please validate it and try again."
- "We cannot detect your TEXT version. Please include it and try again."
Solution
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If you are using the Emarsys VCE editor
For HTML issues, check your email content, in particular any blocks whose source code you might have editor yourself, either in the email or in the template.
For text version issues, contact Emarsys Support as this is generated automatically by Emarsys and cannot be edited. -
If you are using your own HTML code
For HTML issues, many editors can validate your code for you, and you can find some free tools online here: Validating your HTML. - For text version issues, please read our guidelines on text versions and update your code accordingly.
Solution
Read our guidelines on email size for tips on how to reduce the overall size of your email.
Solution
This only applies to you if you are using your own HTML code, since all Emarsys templates are built to be mobile responsive (unless you have explicitly decided otherwise). Read our guidelines on mobile-responsive HTML and update your code.
Deliverability Engagement Score
The Benchmark serving as the basis for the Deliverability Engagement Score has been updated on 29/Nov/2019.
The Deliverability Engagement Score (DES) is a summary of the engagement levels of your contacts over the past two weeks or three months (whichever it takes to cover 20,000 sent emails).
Your open, click and unsubscribe rates are compared against the Emarsys global averages and each one is awarded a score between 0 and 100, according to how high they rank.
The overall DES score can be between these values (In reality of course both of these scores are highly unlikely):
- 0: In that case you have the worst engagement of any account in all three categories
- 300: If you are our the highest global performer in all three categories (open, click, unsubscribe).
Benchmark
The Benchmark values are provided for the three response metrics (open, click, unsubscribe), separately. These are based on the data of all our customers who have sent at least 20,000 emails in the past three months.
Why are DES scores useful?
You should always keep an eye on your DES as it can be a helpful indicator of deliverability problems. Each and every launched email campaign can change this score: it can either increase it in case of high email engagement and good deliverability, or decrease it if the engagement is low.
Your good deliverability improves the overall reputation of Emarsys as a global email provider, which in turn benefits you. This is a classic virtuous circle in the making.
The DES scores are color-coded:
- Red – 0 -> 100 points. This means that your results are in the lowest 10% of all Emarsys accounts.
- Orange – 101 -> 200 points. This means that your results rank between 10% and 40% on the global scale.
- Green – 201 -> 300 points. This means that your results are in the best-performing 60% of accounts
It is important to stay within the green band and to use the actual score itself to measure your own progress over time.