Avoiding The Spam Filter - Maximise Your Email Marketing Visibility
Published on 19 December 14
Hassan
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For anyone considering a B2B (Business to Business) email marketing campaign, the prime concern is, will the mail arrive where you want it. When you've spent time and money producing your company’s latest promotional drive, having it end up in the spam box is the last thing you need. Unfortunately it’s something that happens all too often.
Research has shown up to 60% of emails sent are spam, and businesses and regulators are getting fed up with it. The majority of these end up lost in cyberspace, or the clients spam filter. Even if your emails are as perfect as you can make them, they still stand a 20% chance of being filtered out by highly set filters.
Most countries nowadays have very stringent anti-spam laws, and back them up with heavy fines should a company fall foul of them. The last thing you need is to have your emails accidentally falling outside the law.
Ensure Your Email Package is Optimised:
There is no point in having your email pass all the spam tests, if the configuration is not up to the job. Ensure you have the correct HTML code throughout your emails package, none of it is missing, and any code which is redundant is deleted. There’s little point in a client receiving one of your mails then not being able to open it in the browser they are using.
Always make sure you send a plain text version with your email so it can be read should the email client block HTML.
How to Ensure Your Emails Pass the Spam Filters:
- You need to always include an unsubscribe link, which must remain active for at least 30 days.
- Never use deceptive names, subject lines or reply addresses.
- You must include your genuine emailing address.
- Don’t send mails which are solely images. A 40/60 mix of images and text is best if you need to use images.
Ensure all spelling is correct.
Never use lines of capitals, exclamation marks, unusually large font size, non-standard colours, or any type of form for the client to fill in.
Writing your Marketing Email:
Remember, spam filters are just bots, and as such, search for certain criteria within the mail to decide whether it is spam or genuine. Should they find any perceived spam content, the mail will receive spam points. Over a certain number, the mail is declared spam by the bots.
Avoid the following to keep any spam score to a minimum:
Starting off, don’t use, Dear Friend. Either personalise the name (John, Mary) or use Sir/Madam.
Do not use; Risk free, Low or no risk, No catch, Click below, Click to be removed, Have you been turned down, or, Buy now.
Mentioning money, any sort of a ‘breakthrough’. Text mentioning ‘urgent matter’ or ‘money back guarantees’; will all get you marked down by the spam bots.
So, having ensured all these best practises have been adhered to, are you now free of the spam monster? Unfortunately, not necessarily.
Plan Your Campaign Strategy:
Target your recipients in a business-like manner. Make sure the content of your email goes to the person who would deal with it. Do not email everyone in the office. Nothing is more likely to ensure all your emails end up in the trash can, and your mail shots get permanently marked as spam. Getting them un-blacklisted will be a very hard job.
Hopefully you already keep track of previous email campaigns. No matter that you’re here because you feel the need to improve your system. Check any small successes and the times they were sent. Be flexible with the times you send out your marketing shots, and log the response you receive. Not very good, change the time. Send them out four hours later, or four hours earlier.
I know this has been mentioned before. No matter, if you are working off a business list, there are going to be a number of subscribers who have no use for your particular product. Ensure your unsubscribe link or button is easy to find. Failure to do so will throw out your stats when you are working out the best contacts.
Finally, Keep on Top of Things:
Sending out the same old mail shots, to the list you have been working off for the last two years, will almost guarantee a low capture rate.
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