Key takeaways:
Email health measures your domain’s ability to deliver messages to supporters’ inboxes while avoiding spam filters.
Nonprofits should analyze domain health because it directly impacts engagement, fundraising success, and brand credibility.
Monitor bounce rates, spam complaints, blacklists, and inbox placement to assess email health.
Improve email performance by setting up DMARC, cleaning supporter lists, and segmenting audiences for relevant messaging.
Maintain long-term success with monthly audits, A/B testing subject lines, and running re-engagement campaigns for inactive supporters.
More than 17% of nonprofit emails never reach their supporters’ inboxes. That means donation appeals, volunteer opportunities, and impact stories often vanish before they can inspire action. To prevent this, it’s essential to analyze domain health, the foundation of strong email deliverability. When you analyze domain health, you uncover issues that prevent your messages from reaching your audience, such as poor sender reputation or authentication errors.
Think of email health as a ‘credit score’ for your sending domain. It’s the combination of factors like your sender reputation, authentication, list quality, and engagement that determines whether email providers trust your messages. For nonprofits, this trust is everything.
Here’s why it’s so important:
When your email health is strong, your messages are more likely to reach the target inbox. This means more supporters will see your fundraising emails and event invitations. This may also mean more donations!
Poor email health often sends your communications to the spam folder. Worse, your domain or IP address could get blacklisted.
Good email health is very important to maintaining trust. When supporters receive your emails, they need to feel safe opening them and clicking on donation links without the fear of malware.
Your email health is built on five main pillars:
Are you seeing high bounce rates from old supporter lists or getting spam complaints? This indicates a low sender reputation. A poor reputation tells email providers that your content might not be wanted.
When you send emails to inactive or invalid addresses (e.g., volunteers who have moved on), email providers assume your list is not properly taken care of.
Without SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, you are inviting hackers to send malicious emails from your domain’s good name. This can destroy your reputation. What’s worse, this can put your supporters at risk.
If email providers see that very few people are opening or clicking on your emails, they are more likely to mark your future emails as spam.
If your nonprofit sends a lot of emails, then you should use a dedicated IP address. What’s more, any new IP addresses must be “warmed up” by gradually increasing send volume.
Use these metrics and tools to get a clear picture of your email health:
If more than 2% of your emails bounce, you have a problem. This often means your list has invalid email addresses. In this case, you should use a double opt-in for new signups, so that any new addresses are actually interested.
Your ideal spam complaint rate should be below 0.1%. If you want to keep it low, put your unsubscribe link somewhere easy to find. Also, ensure your email content is actually engaging and relevant.
Use a tool like PowerDMARC’s blacklist checker to see if your domain or IP is listed on any of the 200+ DNS blacklists. If you find yourself on a list, try to get yourself out of it as soon as you can.
Misconfigured SPF, DKIM, or DMARC records can cause your emails to be marked as suspicious. Use an online SPF record checker to check and validate your record.
Some tools can run tests to show you where your emails are ending up across providers.
When was the last time your subscribers opened an email from you? If it's been more than 6 months, most likely it’s time to remove them.
DMARC at p=reject protects your domain from being used for phishing. Start with a relaxed policy like p=none, then move to stricter policies like p=quarantine or p=reject.
Don’t send the same message to everyone; it’s boring. Craft a unique message based on supporter data: major donors, recurring givers, volunteers, event attendees, or newsletter subscribers.
If you’re using a new IP address or email service, don’t send a massive blast right away. Start with a small volume and increase it gradually.
Sign up for feedback loops with major ISPs. This allows them to notify you directly when a user marks your email as spam, so you can remove them from your list asap.
Words like “FREE,” “act now,” or “urgent” can trigger spam filters, and so can ALL CAPS or too many exclamation points.
Use DMARC reports and analytics to monitor your email health at least once a week.
Good email health ensures your nonprofit’s messages reach your supporters. It translates into higher engagement, more successful fundraising, and boosted credibility.
Many tools available in the market today can simplify the technical side of email health by helping you easily set up and manage your email authentication. Boost your inbox placement and ensure your cause gets the attention it deserves.
It’s your domain’s reputation. Good health gets you into the inbox; bad health sends you to spam.
Yes. Anything over 2% tells email providers your list is messy, and they’ll start junking more of your emails as a result.
Set up DMARC. It’s the security guard for your domain that proves to providers you’re legitimate and blocks scammers from using your name.
Yes. A smaller, engaged list gets better deliverability than a large, silent one. It proves people actually want your emails.
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
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