How can I diagnose and fix deliverability issues in Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Key findings

• Root Cause Analysis: The primary step is to identify why your domain reputation is suffering and emails are going to spam. This involves a comprehensive review of your email program, not just isolated symptoms. Diagnosing email deliverability issues is crucial.
• Data Hygiene: Poor list quality, including old lists or newly acquired lists with high rates of bad addresses, significantly impacts deliverability. Maintaining excellent data hygiene is foundational.
• Sending Practices: Inconsistent sending volume and frequency, or sending to unengaged recipients, can harm your sender reputation. Focus on sending to an active and responsive audience.
• Recipient Behavior: A spike in spam complaints (above 0.1%) indicates serious problems with content, audience targeting, or acquisition methods. This directly impacts your sender score and inbox placement.
• Avoid Quick Fixes: Simply warming up a new subdomain without changing underlying problematic practices will only postpone, not solve, deliverability issues. Fixing reputation takes time and patience.
• Monitoring: Regular monitoring of deliverability metrics, like open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints, is vital for early detection of issues. Automated reporting can aid in this.

Key considerations

• Engagement Focus: Prioritize sending to engaged recipients. This means actively segmenting your audience and suppressing or removing inactive subscribers to improve overall engagement metrics.
• Automated Remediation: Implement automated systems to quickly remove bad or non-existent email addresses from your lists upon first detection. This helps prevent repeat issues.
• Consistent Content: Even with deliverability challenges, consistently sending valuable and engaging content can help rebuild reputation over time. Consider a monthly soft-sell piece that maintains audience interest.
• SFMC Tools: Utilize SFMC's reporting capabilities to monitor deliverability at a domain level, tracking opens, clicks, and opt-outs to identify emerging issues. Salesforce provides best practices documentation.

Key opinions

• Proactive Hygiene: Many marketers emphasize the critical role of data hygiene and quickly removing bad addresses to prevent deliverability issues from escalating.
• Engagement-driven Sending: Prioritizing emails to engaged recipients and adjusting sending volume/frequency based on past engagement is a common strategy to maintain good sender reputation.
• Long-term Strategy: Building and maintaining reputation is a continuous effort, not a one-off fix. It requires patience and consistent work to see improvements.
• Content Value: Even for challenging audiences, valuable and engaging content (e.g., blog highlights) can significantly improve open and click rates, positively impacting deliverability.
• Monitoring & Reporting: Automated reporting on key metrics (opens, clicks, opt-outs, deliverability) at a domain level allows marketers to spot emerging issues and react quickly. You can also run a deliverability test.

Key considerations

• Audience Dynamics: Marketers must understand their audience's typical behavior, especially if there's high turnover or a tendency for quick unsubscribes or spam complaints.
• List Management Automation: Automating the suppression of inactive users and removal of bad email addresses is crucial for efficient and effective list hygiene.
• Balancing Goals: It can be challenging to balance business goals (like reaching a wide audience) with deliverability best practices (like only sending to engaged users). Marketers often need to advocate for deliverability-focused strategies within their organizations.
• Avoiding New Domain Pitfalls: Simply moving to a new subdomain without fixing the underlying issues is a temporary solution that will likely fail. Marketers should prioritize fixing the core problems.
• In-depth Diagnostics: Before considering drastic measures, a thorough analysis of all contributing factors, including why emails are going to spam, is essential.

Key opinions

• Specialized Expertise: Experts with long-standing experience in SFMC deliverability (e.g., 15 years) are available for consulting, highlighting the value of deep, platform-specific knowledge.
• Integrated Monitoring: Several experts point to direct integrations with Marketing Cloud for deliverability and reputation monitoring as a key solution. These tools provide real-time insights critical for issue remediation.
• Pro Services: Access to professional services teams is crucial for effective remediation of deliverability issues. These teams have the experience to tackle complex problems.
• Holistic Approach: The consensus among experts is that fixing deliverability requires addressing the root cause, not just symptoms. Simply warming a new subdomain will not solve fundamental issues.
• Patience Required: Restoring a damaged sender reputation takes significant time, consistent work, and a lot of patience, emphasizing that there are no instant fixes.

Key considerations

• Leveraging External Tools: Consider engaging with deliverability platforms or consultants who offer direct SFMC integrations for comprehensive monitoring and remediation support.
• Technical Account Management: Utilize services that provide experienced technical account managers, as their expertise can be invaluable in navigating complex deliverability challenges.
• Avoiding Subdomain Pitfalls: Resist the temptation to switch to a new subdomain without first identifying and resolving the underlying problems. This is a common mistake that wastes resources and time.
• Long-Term Deliverability Health: Focus on sustainable improvements rather than temporary solutions. This includes adherence to best practices in list management and sending behavior, which can be informed by how email experts troubleshoot.

Key findings

• Technical Setup: Salesforce documentation emphasizes proper configuration of authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to ensure emails are authenticated and trusted by receiving mail servers.
• List Management: Official guides stress the importance of maintaining clean, permission-based email lists. This includes regularly removing invalid or unengaged subscribers and avoiding purchased lists.
• Content Quality: Documentation often advises on creating relevant, engaging, and personalized content to reduce spam complaints and improve subscriber interaction.
• Monitoring Tools: Salesforce provides various reports and tools within Email Studio to monitor key deliverability metrics, such as bounces, unsubscribes, and complaints, allowing for timely intervention.
• Reputation Management: The documentation typically covers strategies for building and maintaining a strong sender reputation, including understanding ISP requirements and avoiding email blacklists.

Key considerations

• Adherence to Best Practices: Consistently following Salesforce's recommended deliverability best practices is fundamental for optimal performance and avoiding issues.
• Feedback Loops: Registering for and actively monitoring ISP feedback loops (FBLs) helps identify subscribers who mark emails as spam, allowing for prompt list removal and reputation protection.
• IP Warm-up: When moving to new IPs or domains, a gradual IP warm-up process, as detailed in SFMC documentation, is essential to build sender reputation. Troubleshooting specific bounce codes (like 554 SMTP) is also part of this.
• Compliance: Ensuring compliance with relevant anti-spam laws (e.g., CAN-SPAM, GDPR) and recipient privacy regulations is a non-negotiable aspect of deliverability.
• Sender Authentication: Salesforce documentation outlines how to configure sender authentication settings, including Private Domain and Sender Authentication Package (SAP), which are crucial for consistent branding and improved deliverability.