It may be the high-pitched punch line of an old Monty Python sketch, but when it comes to the marketing emails that you send out to your recipient list, you want nothing to do with Spam. With all the time you spend crafting those messages, you want them to be read, not languish in junk email folders. Ultimately, if your email ends up in Spam, the odds of your recipients opening them up and actually reading them are pretty slim. How can you make sure your emails land in your recipients’ inboxes and not in their Spam folders? Here are 6 helpful hints to stop emails going to spam:
- Keep your list clean.
It’s crucial to send your messages to good, working email addresses only. Email addresses sometimes get full because their owners simply don’t check them, or they get closed out entirely. If you’ve got those emails on your mailing list, it could be a problem for you, as sending messages to too many bad email addresses from a particular provider (say, Yahoo or Gmail) can get you flagged as a spammer. When that happens, your emails may end up in Spam on that provider’s other addresses. Your best solution is to pay attention to messages that bounce back, and then take the time to remove those addresses from your list.
- Keep your blasts small.
Yes, it’s easier to send one big email than ten small ones, but that’s what spammers do. If there are too many recipients on a particular message, it could get flagged as Spam. Fortunately, most email marketing services can easily handle this “divide and conquer” strategy for you.
- Aim for engagement.
If recipients open up your messages, email providers won’t suspect that you’re a spammer, and you’ll be more likely to end up in inboxes rather than junk folders. A high quality subject line can compel recipients to click on your email. Click Here to read our blog post about doing just that.
- Provide high quality content.
Good writing is always important in marketing messages, but you definitely want to avoid any practices that may trip Spam filters. These include:
- Using all caps
- Using the word “free” too much
- Lots of exclamation points
- HTML that’s riddled with coding errors
- Sending only one large image instead of small images plus text
- Provide a clear unsubscribe link.
Not only does this make you look legitimate, but it can eliminate recipients reporting your messages to their provider as Spam. If you get reported enough on a given provider, your emails could end up in Spam on all of that provider’s addresses.
- Ask recipients to add you as a contact.
Taking this route all but guarantees that your messages won’t end up in Spam. It’s a blunt approach, for sure, but sometimes it’s best to be direct. Ask, as the old saying goes, and you just might receive.
No One Loves Spam!
While it’s probably unavoidable that your messages will end up in some Spam folders, you want to keep that number as small as possible. If you’re not sure that your messages are landing where they’re supposed to land, check to make sure you’re doing everything on our list. Your marketing messages are important to the livelihood of your business — take the necessary steps to make sure they’re landing in your recipients’ inboxes.