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The Hidden Cost of Poor Email Deliverability for Small Businesses

poor email deliverability

As a small business owner, you value your connection with each and every customer. The cost of poor email deliverability isn’t just a few unread emails. It’s weakened customer engagement that quietly eats away at your business growth every day.

When your carefully crafted messages get lost in spam or promotions folders, you want to know. Many small businesses allow email deliverability issues to go unnoticed and unaddressed for far too long.

The true impact of poor email deliverability is lost sales and engagement

If you have abandoned carts clogging the virtual aisles of your e-commerce site or subscribers who haven’t opened your newsletter in months, you’re not alone. The good news is that marketing wisdom tells us that these are goldmines of opportunity. Sometimes, they can be solved with one timely email.

A friendly reminder or an exclusive offer routinely converts hesitation and forgetfulness into repeat purchases and renewed engagement. Of course, this all hinges on that email reaching your customer’s inbox.

For a small business, poor email deliverability has big consequences. When you can’t communicate important offers or updates, you end up with fewer sales. Even worse? When customers don’t receive your emails, they forget about your business or lose trust. This one issue can slow your growth and make your marketing efforts less effective.

Email warm-up and authentication: Building trust one send at a time

If you want to consistently land your emails where they belong, build and maintain a positive sender reputation. Your good name with email providers rests on two important factors: email warm-up and proper authentication.

If you are a small business launching a new domain, you want to let everyone know about your services. But blasting a large volume of emails from a new address makes email providers nervous. In contrast, starting small with email warm-up and then sending a steady stream of high-quality emails that engage recipients builds trust. It tells internet service providers that you’re a legitimate sender and not a spammer.

Now, let’s look at proper email authentication. Protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC help prove that your emails are really from you. In a nutshell, your SPF tells email servers which computers are allowed to send emails on your behalf. Your DKIM adds a cryptographic signature to each email that proves it hasn’t been changed during delivery. And your DMARC tells receiving servers what to do if an email fails these checks. It also helps you get reports about suspicious activity.

When you follow best practices for email warm-up and authentication, you build a strong sender reputation. That reputation decides whether your messages reach the inbox or get relegated to spam.

Email automation frees you to focus on growth

The technical nitty-gritty of maintaining email infrastructure can easily overwhelm you as a small business owner. Setting up DNS records, monitoring domain reputation, and troubleshooting delivery issues are not set-it-and-forget-it kinds of jobs.

Carefully controlling how many emails you send and monitoring how every recipient reacts is extremely time-consuming for a small business owner. On top of that, setting up and updating things like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records requires messing with your domain’s DNS settings. This can be tricky if you’re not familiar with web hosting or email technology.

The good news? Today, cutting-edge platforms leverage AI-driven automation to fully optimize your email deliverability. All of this happens without any tedious manual work.

The platforms start by warming up your domain. They send small batches of emails and track how they are received. Based on the level of engagement, the platform adjusts how many emails it sends over time to build a good reputation with email providers.

AI-driven platforms also automatically configure your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC settings. They stay on top of evolving regulations and make changes whenever necessary.

As time goes on, AI monitors your email placements around the clock and adjusts settings in real-time. The platforms keep you in the loop and send actionable suggestions that help you boost engagement and keep your sender reputation intact.

Email automation helps you personalize at scale

With automation handling the technical details of email deliverability, you can focus on creating relevant and personalized content that engages your customers. When you craft personalized emails that speak directly to each customer’s preferences and behavior, you build deeper loyalty.

AI-driven platforms can help here as well. They track engagement data such as when their customers prefer to open emails and what topics interest them most. By using this data to segment your contact lists and target your messaging, you can craft uniquely relevant content that resonates and drives engagement.

For example, the platform may prompt you to reconnect with an unresponsive subscriber by sending an exclusive discount on a product that they viewed but didn’t buy. It may also suggest thanking a loyal customer with early access to your new collections. These data-driven insights enhance your email campaigns by making the conversation personal.

Email is powerful. But only if it’s delivered. Don’t let poor deliverability silently corrode your growth. Optimize your email strategy, recover lost sales, and then personalize each email to build lasting loyalty.

Daniel Shnaider is a visionary entrepreneur and co-founder of Warmy.io and AnyBiz.io, pioneering tools that transform email deliverability and B2B lead generation. Daniel is also the founder of MelaShield, an award-winning AI-driven melanoma detection platform. Driven by a passion for innovation and human connection, he builds technology that not only delivers results but creates lasting impact.

Photo courtesy Getty Images for Unsplash+

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