First things first, no one wants to be marked as spam!
Whether you run a business in the service industry or retail, email marketing should be at the top of your priority list. Marketing professionals have identified email marketing as a successful lead-generation strategy. Efficiently crafting your message in an email has proven to be a key for developing a noteworthy campaign that will retain customers in the long run.
Although promotional emails may seem like a simple way to increase interest in your business, some emails get marked as spam. Your carefully crafted content might not have the desired effect on your recipients because they might delete the email without even reading it.
When you send an email, you want to make sure it’s being seen and opened the way you intend. If emails end up in Spam or aren’t being opened at all, this can have a huge effect on your conversion rates. In fact, almost 86% of global email traffic is unsolicited junk mail (with approximately 400 billion spam messages sent every single day). So how do you avoid emails being marked as spam? Here are some best practices for avoiding being marked as spam when sending out an email campaign.
Tip 01: Avoid Purchased Email List
As a website owner with amazing products or content, you may want to spread your words to as many people as possible, but your email list is lacking. However, when you purchase a list of email addresses from another site or company and send your message to them without their permission, this is considered spamming. If they don’t know who you are then it’s likely that they will mark the email as spam.
Buying an email list of prospects harms your reputation. Spam traps and dead emails are among the many dangers associated with maintaining a list of email addresses you purchased since mailbox providers typically scorn this practice quickly.
It is necessary to grow your user base naturally (rather than spamming), emailing willing participants and not randomly.
Tip 02: Write Email Content that doesn’t look like Spam
Marketing has its own language, full of overused buzzwords. It may be difficult to avoid using some common expressions when pitching your product or service.
With the rise of technology, spam filters have become more advanced in recognizing the language used in emails. They scan your message for keywords that describe its content and categorize it accordingly.
What does this mean for you? Consider these valuable pointers next time you craft an email campaign:
- AVOID ALL CAPS
- Limit the use of exclamation marks
- Avoid hyperlinks unless they are highly relevant
- Avoid “free,” “bonus,” or “sale” words
- Try to avoid short catchphrases that seem cliché, such as “Act now!”
- Avoid long paragraphs
Tip 03: Include Text Only Version in Emails
You can avoid emails from going to spam by adding a text-only version of your email. This will also help if the recipient can’t read HTML emails.
If you want your images to show up in the email, make sure that you send a text version of them as well. Here are some simple tips that will help protect your images from spam filters:
- Avoid using attachments in emails.
- Make sure your email has valid HTML.
- Avoid image-only emails
- Include two lines of text or an accompanying graphic for each image you use in the email.
Tip 04: Verify Your IP/Domain Reputation
Reputation is incredibly important! Once the spam filters notice something fishy about your IP or domain, your emails will land in the Spam folder. The error message you’ll see at this point references the reputation of your IP or domain.
You can use a number of online tools, such as MxToolBox, MultiRBL, and AntiAbuse to check your domain or IP address against blacklists like Real-time Blackhole List (RBL) and Domain Name System-based Blackhole List (DNSBL).
Tip 05: Choose a reliable email service provider
Email providers are evaluated on the reputation of their clients’ IP addresses and domains. If the provider deals with spammers, they will eventually be blocked and can easily end up in spam folders.
Choose a company with a good track record to host your email. Do not rely on any sales pitches, no matter how enticing they may sound. Only work with companies that have a generally positive reputation in the market.
Tip 06: Choose “from” name or address wisely
When a message is received, the “from” name and email address are displayed for quick identification of where it came from. This will allow people to know who the sender is before they open an email that could be spam or just trash.
Your domain may include multiple email addresses. For instance, if a customer sends in a complaint or requests help via your website; they might get an automated reply from [email protected].
Carefully choose what emails are sent from which address. If possible, stick with one that’s been working well with your promotional messages and change it as little as possible.
Try to avoid obscure email choices, such as [email protected] or [email protected].
No matter how trustworthy your company may be, it can cause confusion when you frequently switch email senders. For the best customer experience, always use their main contact address in all of your marketing emails.
Tip 07: Use Crisp & Appealing Subject line
The subject line is the first chance you have to grab your reader’s attention; don’t waste it. Keep your subject line as short and crisp as possible. Emails with subject lines between nine and sixty characters are most likely to be opened.
Emails are unpredictable; it can be difficult to know what will happen when you send an email. However, there are a few key points about an email that all professional marketers need to know. The first thing is that 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices–which means an important subject line needs to stay visible and not get cut off by the phone.
Avoid emails being marked as spam by personalizing your subject lines. Personalized subject lines increase website traffic and drive sales, but they also have higher open rates and click-through rates because people tend to be more interested in receiving personalized messages.
If you want to be sure your email is not marked as spam, create a sense of urgency with your subject lines. Make the offer that will expire in just a short time and make it evident in the subject line.
Provide breaking news or stimulate curiosity: these are great subjects which many people would rather read instead of deleting them from their inbox.
Tip 08: Self-test to ensure your email is not spam
When creating an email campaign, it’s important that you subscribe to your own emails. This will ensure your legitimate messages aren’t being marked as spam by the receiver’s settings.
It’s important to assess the effectiveness of your email campaign in order to ensure it is successful. This includes email specials and other large-scale campaigns you have planned for the near future.
If your emails are getting caught by spam filters, you’re losing a high chance of reaching out to new audiences and opportunities with your campaign. Premium services that improve email campaigns can be wasted if all messages get caught in spam filters.
To avoid emails going to spam, you should always self-test and make changes to your settings according to the results.
Tip 09: Get Whitelisted
Another way to ensure your email won’t be ended up in a spam folder is by asking users to add your email address to their whitelist. Avoid sending your email to spam by including a call-to-action in the text or making it prominent somewhere in the body. Though spam may be inevitable, it does not have to be a relentless plea for action. Making the case that if your fans want to continue hearing from you, then whitelist your email will help immensely.
Tip 10: Be Honest and Stay Relevant
Make sure your email’s subject line accurately reflects its content and do not use any misleading words such as “Click here!” or “You must read this!” These phrases will only serve to have the recipient open and delete your email.
One email tactic to avoid is disguising your routing details. For example, faking an address and creating a fraudulent pseudonym creates an unethical practice that could ruin a business’s reputation as a spammer.
Your email content has to be relevant. Even if you are sending emails only once or twice a month, your content could still get flagged as spam if the subscriber doesn’t find it valuable enough.
Let’s say you run an eCommerce website for home furniture. A marketing email that updates your subscribers about their local weather probably would not be useful to them or to your brand.
If you own a restaurant, you can share some strategies that your restaurant uses to manage waste. Sharing the recipe of one of your most popular dishes is also an excellent way to make the email marketing campaigns for your restaurant more impactful.
Try to maintain a consistent communications strategy, like staying on brand or sending messages with discounts and offers. You can also try other strategies such as running contests or conducting giveaways.
Ending Note
As with any other form of digital marketing, handling email campaigns is always a formidable task. But if you take a good look at your current strategy and tactics there are ways to make sure that your emails will never get sent to spam.
When you change your email style and messaging, it will improve the likelihood of coming from spam. It can also help create curiosity in your business that leads to an improved customer base.
