Do You Need an Inbox Placement Tool? 4 Signs It’s Time to Invest

Picture this: You’ve spent time curating what is set to be a high-converting email cadence You’ve hit send. You’re impatiently waiting for the responses to come flooding in… but they don’t, and you don’t know why. 

Sounds a little frustrating, right? 

If you’re regularly sending emails, and your response rates are below 5%, you might have a problem related to Inbox placement. I.e. your emails are not reaching your user’s primary inbox–maybe they’re even ending up in the spam folder.

Enter Inbox placement tools. 

They help you identify and solve deliverability problems, ensuring your emails end up in the right place—your contact’s inbox.

In this article we dive into the importance of Inbox placement for Sales and Marketing teams, and how to identify if email deliverability (due to poor inbox placement monitoring) is the root cause of why your emails aren’t performing well.

Table of contents

1. What is inbox placement?
2. Who should use inbox placement tools?
3. 4 signs it’s time to invest in an inbox placement tool
4. How to improve inbox placement with the right tool
5. Mastering inbox placement

What is Inbox Placement?

Inbox placement refers to the process of ensuring that your emails successfully land in the recipient’s main inbox, as opposed to spam or promotional folders.

While email deliverability indicates that your email has reached the recipient’s mail server, inbox placement takes it a step further by ensuring that it is delivered to the main inbox where it’s most likely to be seen and engaged with.

Why does it matter? Simply put, if your emails aren’t reaching the primary inbox, your chances of connecting with your audience, converting leads, and driving sales dramatically decrease. You could be missing out on significant opportunities, all because your emails are misplaced.

Who should use inbox placement tools?

If you’ve been struggling to hit your targets in email engagement or responses, an inbox placement tool might be the solution you need. These tools are particularly useful for:

• Sales reps who rely heavily on email outreach to engage prospects but find their messages landing in spam.
• Marketing teams who are trying to boost email campaign engagement but struggling with poor inbox delivery.
• Team managers who want to track email performance, ensure accountability, and optimize team efforts.
• Businesses that generate revenue through email campaigns and cannot afford to have their emails go unseen.

Whether you're monitoring individual performance or managing company-wide campaigns, inbox placement tools help you solve the challenge of emails being missed or ignored.

4 signs it’s time to invest in an inbox placement tool

1. You regularly reach out to new prospecting lists

When you’re constantly targeting new prospecting lists, your sender reputation is at higher risk due to factors like unverified email addresses, inconsistent engagement, or potential spam complaints. 

Reaching out to new lists without ensuring high-quality deliverability can lead to poor inbox placement and damage your domain’s reputation over time.

An inbox placement tool helps monitor your deliverability metrics when sending to new lists. It provides insights into how well your emails are being received, alerts you to potential red flags like high bounce rates or spam complaints, and suggests strategies to improve future outreach. 

These tools usually contain some type of email verification or list-cleaning feature that ensures you are only targeting contacts who are likely to engage in your outreach campaigns.

2. You have low email response rates

Ever wonder why your email response rates seem so low despite having optimized subject lines and email copy for generating responses? 

It might not be your content—it could be where your emails are landing. If your emails are being filtered into the promotions folder or spam, they’re less likely to be opened, much less replied to.

Tracking where your emails are landing and receiving insights into how to optimize your campaigns for better engagement can help improve response rates–and that’s exactly what an inbox placement tool can help you with. 

By making adjustments based on data from such a tool, you can ensure your emails end up in the primary inbox of your most engaged users and ultimately drive responses that will help you reach your targets.

3. You rely heavily on email for revenue generation

For businesses that rely on email to drive revenue, inbox placement is critical. If you’re one of the 89% that use email as a primary channel for lead generation, poor placement can mean lost sales, missed leads, and a direct hit to your bottom-line income.

Inbox placement tools provide critical data on your deliverability and performance metrics, allowing you to safeguard revenue by continuously optimizing your email strategies. 

Source: Allegrow Inbox Placement Insights

4. You don’t have time for manual inbox monitoring

Manually checking inbox placement for every email campaign, across every rep can be incredibly time-consuming, and it’s certainly not scalable. Especially if you’re sending hundreds—or even thousands—of emails each month from multiple inboxes or email domains. 

You may be missing key insights, like which specific mailboxes have low sender reputation, and that are therefore impacting the overall team’s email outreach performance. 

Source: Allegrow Sales Rep Leaderboard

Investing in an inbox placement tool automates the process of monitoring where your emails are landing, as well as seeing a breakdown of how each mailbox per rep is performing. 

This frees up your time while providing instant feedback and continuous monitoring of email warm-up performance.

How to improve inbox placement with the right tool

Once you’ve identified that it’s time to invest in an inbox placement tool, the next step is choosing the right one. Here are some actionable features to look for:

• Real-time monitoring: You need a tool that tracks your emails in real-time, letting you know where they’re landing—whether in the primary inbox, promotions tab, or spam.
• Sender reputation insights: Tools that offer a detailed look at your sender reputation and offer suggestions for improvement can be invaluable.
• Authentication suggestions: Look for tools that help you implement and monitor email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to improve deliverability.
• Actionable analytics: The best inbox placement tools will not only show you where your emails are landing but also provide actionable insights to help you adjust your strategy and improve placement over time.

By utilizing an inbox placement tool with these features, you’ll be well-equipped to optimize your inbox delivery for all email campaigns. Ensuring they land exactly where they need to—in front of your audience.

Mastering inbox placement

Poor inbox placement is more than a minor inconvenience; it can directly affect your revenue, lead generation, and overall email campaign success. If you can relate to any of the four signs discussed, it’s time to consider investing in an inbox placement tool. These tools can help you improve email deliverability, improve engagement metrics, and ensure your emails reach the right inbox, every time.

Ready to take control of your inbox placement? 

Assess your email campaigns today and see how the right inbox placement tool can transform your outreach success–request a demo of Allegrow.

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