How to Keep Your Marketing Emails from Entering Spam Folders

Email marketing campaigns target "warm" consumers ready to purchase a product, making them highly successful when handled appropriately. But what causes some email to go directly to spam files while others get through to the customer? Take a look at the following tips on how to keep your marketing emails from entering spam folders for a few quick, easy tips that will raise your campaign's chances for success.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• email marketing plan
• email marketing service (think IContact or Constant Contact)

1. Start minmizing the chances that your marketing emails will get lost in spam folders by attending to the subject line. Capital letters and exclamation points should be excluded completely whenever possible, as they are often scanned first by spam filters.

2. Be careful about adding several outgoing links within the content of your email. Emails containing too many outgoing links are sometimes automatically sent to the spam folder.

3. 
   morguefile.com/dave

   Always gain permission before sending out a marketing email! Permission based marketing is always best (and your safest option legally).

4. Take note of the font size being used. Larger fonts are scanned by spam filters and raise the risk of an email being intercepted.

5. Keep in mind that plain text is far less likely to raise a red flag with spam filters than html codes. In other words, filling an email with several pictures and advertisements may raise its risk of becoming spam.

6. Be sure that the sender address is recognizable. The address that your email marketing campaigns are sent from must be instantly recognizable to the reader to prevent unnecessary spam reporting. Adding your company's name or the name of the product may be sufficient.

7. 
   morguefile.com/dee

   Place a physical mailing address as well as a valid return email address in each email. A physical address is required by law (although the requirements change from time to time, so be sure to doublecheck). A valid email address ensures that customers feel they can cancel a subscription without resorting to reporting you to their email service provider.

8. Finally, consider using the services of a major email marketing service. Some of the major services offer spam-checking tools that evaluate each email's risk of being filtered before it is ever sent out. Ask about this tool before signing up with a major program.

Tips & Warnings

• Sending out emails that are regularly reported as spam can result in being black listed by an email service provider completely! Make transparency your number one priority to prevent complaints.

[godfather25]

on 7/19/2009 I hate it when important e-mail goes into the spam folder. These are excellent suggestions.

[JMKnudson]

on 2/21/2009 This is something many people don't think about when using email marketing. Thank you for bringing these tips to light.