Did you know that roughly 15% of emails fail to reach the recipients’ primary inboxes? Shocking, right? Even your legitimate emails could be branded as spam. But don’t despair or stand by watching your efforts go down the spam drain. While spam filters can be challenging, they’re not invincible. So, let’s arm ourselves with strategies to help your emails avoid spam’s cold embrace.
We’ll reveal crafty tactics to help you dodge those pesky spam filters. But first, let’s understand why and how they confine emails to the spam folder.
Why Your Emails Might Take the Spam Exit
You put tremendous effort into crafting bulk emails that deliver value to your readers and boost your company’s sales. The catch is scammers are equally industrious, bombarding inboxes with unsolicited digital messages about miraculous pills or unexpected royal inheritances.
Fortunately for users, email providers have upped their game. They’ve developed filters that segregate annoying (sometimes dangerous) spam messages into a separate folder.
Unfortunately for marketers, these spam filters don’t always discriminate between pesky spam and well-intentioned emails.
These filters employ algorithms to scrutinize incoming emails, identify spam triggers, and dispatch suspicious messages to the spam folder. Their detection mechanisms range from essential pattern recognition to sophisticated machine learning. And they keep evolving, throwing new hurdles into the marketer’s path.
Persuading email marketing providers that your mass email isn’t spam isn’t always a walk in the park.
However, by learning how to sidestep spam filters, you can ensure more of your messages hit the right inbox, and that’s exactly what we’ll explore next.
Strategies to Keep Your Emails Out of the Spam Abyss
Now, let’s delve into strategies for dodging spam filters. Your messages deserve to be read, and we’re here to help ensure email providers don’t toss them into the spam folder.
Dodge Spam Triggers
Your prime objective is to convince top email services like Gmail that your emails are spam-free.
Spam filters scrutinize email content and subject lines for spam words and phrases. Here are some common trigger words to watch out for:
Here’s the list:
- Amazing
- Winner
- Guarantee
- Opportunity
- Congratulations
- Check Bonus Free
- Free prize
- Free gift
- Risk-free
- Toll-free
- Proven success
- Easy money
- No cost
- 50% free
- 100% satisfied
- Incredible deal
- Unlimited earnings
- Best price
- Great offer
- Offer expires
- Limited time offer
- Take action now
- Order now
- Buy now
- Special promotion
- Deal of a lifetime
- Once in a lifetime
- Click here
- Promise you
- Money order
- Cancel at any time
- Dear friend
- For only
- ($) Increase sales
- You are a winner
- This is not spam
But it’s not just about the words. Spam triggers also cover aspects that raise doubts about the sender’s credibility and intentions (mainly because they’ve been linked with scamsters before).
Watch out for triggers like
- Poor domain reputation
- Suspicious attachments
- Excessive use of exclamation marks
- Words in all caps
- Typographical or spelling errors
Keep a checklist handy to swiftly audit your emails before hitting ‘send.’
Bonus: Avoiding these words, you’ll avoid sounding overly “sales,” which usually resonates well with recipients.
Choose a Trustworthy Email Service Provider
Email Service Providers (ESPs) are designed to streamline the bulk emailing process for marketers. However, not all ESPs are created equal. Unfortunately, some have partnered with questionable clients and could trigger alarm bells for your emails merely through association.
So, how to pick a reliable ESP? Here are a few tips
Investigate delivery rates. Before signing on the dotted line with an ESP, inquire about their average delivery rate (98% or higher is a good benchmark). Also, please find out how they assist their clients in achieving high delivery rates. Choose the tried and tested. In the realm of ESPs, the shiny new option isn’t always the best. Collaborating with providers with a solid track record of effectiveness and adaptability is preferable. Look out for positive reviews from credible businesses. Consider the experiences of other customers with an ESP’s services. Surf the web for reviews and testimonials. And don’t hesitate to tap into your network and ask friends or fellow marketers about their experiences with ESPs.
Remember, you’ve worked hard to establish a stellar reputation for your brand. It’s only fair that you avoid any software provider that could potentially sully it. Always Obtain Recipient Consent Sending emails to recipients who haven’t given you the green light is a surefire way to land in the spam folder. Worse, it could lead to hefty fines!
Countries including the UK, Germany, Australia, Spain, France, and the Netherlands enforce strict laws against unsolicited emails.
To steer clear of legal tussles, consider these preventive measures
Adopt a double opt-in approach. Instead of automatically adding email addresses to your mailing list, request subscribers to confirm their registration via a confirmation link or checkbox sent in a welcome email. Request your recipients to whitelist your email. This effectively ensures your emails pass through spam filters and land directly in the recipient’s inbox.
Remember, even consenting subscribers can manually mark your emails as spam if they feel overwhelmed by your messages. So, make sure your emails consistently offer value to your audience.
Unsubscribing Should be a Breeze Spam filters actively look for an unsubscribe button or link. Failing to include one could swiftly reroute your email to the spam folder. Worse still, you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law (the US CAN-SPAM Act mandates the inclusion of an unsubscribe option).
While delivering valuable content increases the likelihood of retaining your subscribers, some will opt out regardless. In such cases, promptly removing these addresses from your mailing list is wise. Even better, employ a professional email service to automate this process.
Bear in mind not all uninterested subscribers will formally unsubscribe. Some may ignore your emails or label them as spam. This could tarnish your reputation and impact your delivery rates, so it’s critical to regularly clean your list of unengaged subscribers and inactive email addresses.
Use a Spam-Checking Tool to Spot Potential Issues Manually scanning emails for potential spam triggers can be a taxing endeavor. You can lighten this load by using spam checkers – tools that simulate how your email would fare when subjected to a spam filter. These tools offer valuable metrics and insights for error correction and boosting email engagement.
Typical features of spam-checking tools include:
- Email preview: Displays your email as it would appear across different ESPs and devices. Inbox monitoring: Tracks how major email providers categorize your emails based on your domain name.
- Email analytics: Provides data on the number of recipients who open your emails, response time, link click-throughs, etc.
- Reputation tracking: Monitors your IP reputation and any issues affecting it, such as spam complaints, inactive subscribers, and blacklisting.
- Blacklist monitoring: Alerts you if your IP has been blacklisted.
Remember, it’s not just about the content; your email’s appearance matters too. That brings us to our next point.
Optimize Emails for Dark Mode
A recent Android Authority survey revealed that 81.9% of users enable dark mode whenever it’s available. Ignoring this trend could be detrimental to your email marketing. It’s crucial to optimize your emails for dark mode.
If you fail to do so, the following issues may arise:
- ESPs might automatically adapt your email to dark mode, often resulting in poor color adjustments and difficult-to-read content.
- Your emails may maintain their original light rendering, causing discomfort to readers who expect a dark mode experience in their inbox.
Consequently, your readers might:
- Mark your emails as spam.
- Ignore or delete your emails.
- Unsubscribe from your email list.
Optimizing your emails for dark mode should be an integral part of your marketing campaign to avoid these pitfalls and maintain high email deliverability rates.
Consider these tips:
- Use plain text emails: Plain text can easily switch between light and dark modes, making it an ideal alternative to HTML-heavy emails.
- Optimize logos and images: Utilize PNG or transparent files for your logos and images to ensure they appear properly on both white and black backgrounds. Adding a light stroke to a dark-colored logo design is also helpful.
- Test-run your emails: Before sending out emails to subscribers, make sure they display correctly across email providers, browsers, and devices. Automated tools can simplify this process.
Turn to a marketing automation platform, for assistance in optimizing your emails. This comprehensive engagement platform offers drag-and-drop tools and templates for creating engaging emails and allows you to run A/B tests to ensure your text and images appear just right.
Navigating the complex world of spam filters may seem daunting, but with the right strategies and tools, you can make sure your valuable emails land in the primary inbox.
Following these essential steps and utilizing automated tools to streamline specific processes, you’ll be well-equipped to improve your email marketing campaigns. Remember, a successful email campaign hinges on delivering engaging and relevant content to your audience while maintaining a clean and professional appearance. Keep refining your approach, and watch your customer engagement rates soar.
