16 recommendations that will increase delivery of email marketing messages straight into the subscriber’s inbox.
Legitimate email marketing professionals are committed to generating content that is SPAM free and in most cases this leads to little if any blocking issues by SPAM filters. This being the case, project managers and copy writers need to take into account SPAM filters while they are designing and producing email marketing content.
Below are 16 recommendations that have worked for my clients. Using these techniques led to an increase in the number of email marketing messages that were delivered into the subscriber’s inbox.
1. Maintain a healthy balance of image to text ratio in your email marketing campaigns. Many email marketing professionals agree on creating content with a weigh of 60% textual content combined with 40% images. These can fluctuate a bit in either direction but not so much.
2. Under no circumstances should the content of an email marketing message be one big individual image.
The reason for this is twofold. SPAMMERS use this technique to try and bypass SPAM filters that are on the lookout for certain textual keywords and internet service providers don’t like large images because it causes them to waste bandwidth when a large amount of emails are opened with such images.
3. Along with the HTML version of the email always employ a text version as well. The reason is because SPAM filters sometimes allow email marketing messages that have both of these versions to go through. Using both HTML and text version emails shows that the type of message that is being send is more legitimate as SPAMMERS would not go into the trouble of trying to engage with people by creating both HTML and text versions. SPAMMERS are more interested in blasting an email message and moving on without much concern of what the email looks like if a particular email recipient can’t view it correctly.
4. Stay clear of Deception and lies. No excuses. Just don’t do it.
5. Avoid using exclamation marks within the email subject lines and the actual body of the email itself as this can trigger SPAM filters to block your messages.
Also important is to avoid using ALL CAPS from within the subject line and within the body of the email message. If one does need to use ALL CAPS, then I am of the opinion that it should be used in moderation.
6. Avoid words and phrases that seem way too good to be true. Sure, there often is “once in a lifetime opportunities” however these messages do not get delivered into the inbox.
7. SPAM filters algorithms are such that they take email marketing messages which contains anything along the lines of money back guarantee and in most circumstances delivery it straight into the junk mail folder so try and limit the use of such language in your email newsletters.
The reason to avoid such language in email campaigns is because many SPAMMERS use this technique to sell anything from downloadable media which can be obtained for free to very expensive vitamins because they know that few if any people would complain. SPAM filter algorithms have been modified with time to recognize and deliver such messages straight into the junk mail folder.
8. Try and avoid using the word urgent or any similar words such as critical, vital, imperative, insistent, and burning. In most cases, it’s not very pressing if an email is sent. These types of messages are often used by SPAMMERS and people trying to pull a scam on others so any mention of urgency in your email marketing campaigns would usually cause the email newsletter to end up in the junk folder.
My view on this is that there are other ways to promote a limited time offer while at the same time avoiding certain keywords that trigger SPAM filters.
9. When sending out an email newsletter a company should avoid fancy fonts, large bolded characters, or other assorted nuttiness such as flashing banners within the HTML email template.
Not only can the fancy and/or large bolded font be very annoying to the email recipient but having to many images/banners can lead to a high image to text ratio which will trigger SPAM filters.
10. Avoid claiming that your organization has made a new discovery or invented something that will revolutionize the world especially if the company deals with anything financial.
These types of marketing messages have been used in so many scams that SPAM filters are programmed to send email messages of this type to the spam folders.
Stay away from using too much textual content regarding finance or any type of investment. Of course, in the event that the nature of the business happens to be investments related, the company has no choice but to talk about this in their newsletter but do not overdo it and paying special attention to use words that do not trigger any SPAM filters.
11. In email marketing newsletters that are send to email subscribers avoid very small fonts (which can be hardly read) or fonts that have the same background color as the email template. When this is done, users can’t see any of these “hidden” characters.
The reason this was done is to make the email template look more relevant by increasing the amount of text in the body of the email if many images were used.
Avoid doing this because many spammers have used these two techniques to get around email filters in order to get into the inbox so if you sent these types of messages you appear to be a SPAMMER.
12. Avoid using hidden links within the email marketing message. For example, images or text that does not give the impression that they are linkable to a landing page but upon being clicked on in error by the reader actually redirect users to a landing page which would install malicious software such as spyware, viruses, and other unwanted applications on a user’s machine.
13. Authenticate your email marketing program. Various internet service providers such as AOL, Hotmail, EarthLink, RoadRunner, Comcast, Yahoo! and Gmail have implemented email authentication as a vital foundation in their SPAM fighting activities. When a company authenticates their emails marketing program, the email campaigns which are sent out can immediately sidestep some SPAM filters. This would increase the likelihood that the email newsletters would arrive in the inbox.
Another advantage to authenticating email messages within an email marketing program is because a many email providers such as Yahoo! and Hotmail will advise recipient’s in their inbox that the email message has been authenticated. This can lead to an increase in trust between the organization that is sending the email and the email subscriber which can lead to an increase in the probability that an email message will be opened. This increase in engagement with email subscribers will in most cases translate to higher revenue.
Email authentication, building trust with email subscribers and higher revenue. As the French would say la vie en rose which translates to “Life Is Rosy”
To get more details on email authentication, read the following blog post, Email authentication (SPF, Sender ID and DomainKeys-DKIM) is a key in email marketing best practices.
14. If you’re getting too many spam complaints through your feedback loop program then consider looking at your email list for possible reasons. For examples is the list to old and your organization has not sent out an email in a very long time? This could very well be a reason why some subscribers do not remember signing up for your email newsletter and are hitting the SPAM button.
If your organization didn’t set up a feedback loop program for your email marketing program with major internet service providers I would highly encourage you to do so because implementing feedback loops for email marketing would increase your domain/IP address reputation and in turn inbox deliverability.
Another possible reason for the high number of spam complaints through your feedback loop program is permission.
Do you have permission to send an email to these individuals? Maybe a division within your organization has a business relationship with email subscribers because they sold them a product or a service in the past but did these same clients specifically give permission to send them email newsletters regarding another product or service from another division of the company? Many times these same individuals do not know that the companies are related and therefore hit the SPAM button.
Always obtain permission by either speaking to the customer on the phone or if the previous business transaction took place through a website, permission can be obtained by using either single or double opt-in verification methods.
15. Many large internet service providers such as Hotmail, EarthLink , AOL, Comcast and Yahoo employ a white listing programs to make sure that email messages reach the recipient’s inbox as long as the email that is being sent meets the policies of the ISPs. Signing up for such white listing program with internet service providers is highly recommended.
16. Quickly remove undeliverable email addresses which bounce back. An email address with a soft bounce should be removed from an email list after a specific email address has bounced back three times. An email address with a hard bounce should be removed immediately.
The reason for this is because internet service providers look at the percentage of your bounces and will start to block future messages from being delivered if an effort is made to repeatedly send email messages to email addresses that bounce back.
To learn more on email bounces, what they mean as well as what type of bounces exist, read the following blog post, Understanding Email Marketing Bounces in Email Campaign Reports.
One more for the road so we’ll call it number 17. Never ever buy email lists because even if email subscribers opt-in to an email list, there is no way to confirm that they signed up to receive the same type of information that your company would be sending them. This increases the likelihood that the email recipient would hit the SPAM key and effect the reputation of your domain/IP address. This can lead to a decrease in the amount of emails that are actually being delivered into the inbox of your recipients.
You never know where these email addresses came from. Are they really people who opt-in to receive email marketing messages or were they collected over the web using a method called email harvesting? These email addresses can include honeypot which are designed to be part of a spam trap program.
Don’t risk buying an email list; it’s just not worth it.
