Email Marketing Do's and Dont's for Getting through Spam Filters
If email marketing is part of your marketing strategy, then one of the most important hurdles to get over is making sure your emails make it through the spam filters.
For many years, email service providers have had spam filters to ensure that their users are not bombarded with the likes of illegitimate offers of winning millions by sending their bank details to a sketchy Nigerian locale.
The way in which email providers to do this is by identifying spam-heavy content, monitoring what emails their users mark as spam and eventually blacklisting the originating email/IP address of these emails, and analysing the legitimacy of where the email originated from.
So even if your intentions are pure and all you want is to send your marketing emails to those who have subscribed to your website, these same same stringent (but logical) parameters could affect your emails getting through to the receiver.
To help you ensure your legitimate emails make it through the spam filtering gates, we have put together a list of do's and don’t's that you can use as a reference point any time.
What you should not do:
- Don’t look around on websites for emails that you could send your content to.This is illegal and will most likely lead to more people marking your content as spam.
- There are a huge number of flagged terms and words that spam filters look out for. Although it is not as big a deciding factor as it used to be, it still matters. For an extensive list of these, click here.
- Avoid using CAPS LOCK and excessive exclamation marks!!! Both of these tend to trigger spam filters.
- Misspelling words can also trigger spam filters.
- Avoid all forms of bad punctuation.
- Using too many images in your emails can raise the suspicion levels of spam filters.
- If your emails are being bounced back by certain addresses, don’t keep attempting to send emails to those addresses. This can get you blacklisted.
What you should do:
- Ask inactive users if they still want to be on your mailing list, as this will reduce the chances that they will eventually mark your emails as spam
- Provide double opt-ins. When a user signs up for your email service, send them an email with a link they need to follow to confirm that they definitely want to be on your mailing list.
- Certain email providers can be questionable from the start, and that’s why sometimes other email providers may mark your emails as spam straight away, because your provider is notorious for spamming. Ensure your provider at least encourages double opt-ins, deals with spam complaints, and keeps in good graces with other email providers.
- Ask subscribers to whitelist you (add you to their mailing list).
- Include an unsubscribe link in the footer of your emails.
- Use a consistent, familiar sender name that your subscribers can always identify as you.
- Include your recipient's name in the “To:” field of your email. This helps spam filters realise you know the contact.
- Offering both HTML and plain text versions of your email increases your legitimacy in the eyes of ISPs.
- Get email sender accreditation from a 3rd party so ISPs know you’re a trusted sender.
- Keep an eye on your sender reputation to ensure you don’t get blacklisted.
- Always honour unsubscribes.
Along with these tips, ensure you keep up to date with any new ways that spam filters may decide what is spam and what isn’t. If you’ve ever had any trouble with spam filters and found other methods that work in combating them, be sure to share your experiences in the comments below.
For more information, refer to the Australian government's page on the Spam Act and Codes of Practice.
Image source: Patchareeya99/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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