Your email marketing campaign can be a labour of love if you’re passionate about your business (which you should be!). Your marketing emails take time and effort to create, and the last thing you want to have happen after you hit “send” is for your emails to miss being seen. One of the most common ways this happens is that, though delivered, your emails are dumped into your subscribers’ spam folders.
Nobody likes receiving junk mail of any kind, and it’s most likely that any mail that lands in a recipient’s spam folder won’t even be looked at, let alone opened. Yet spam is a big issue thanks to the automation of email marketing by many and spammers are thriving. It’s estimated that almost eighty-five percent of all email traffic is actually spam.
Business owners need to make sure their email efforts aren’t being flagged as spam from the outset. The first thing to do is to make sure that you, as a business owner, select the highest quality marketing automation platform – such as ClickSend – to manage and track your email marketing campaigns. But there is more to it than that…
Here are the top things to avoid if you want your emails to stay out of subscribers’ spam folders.
Spammy Content
Quality content counts more than anything. It needs to be carefully considered to avoid being ranked as spam by ISPs. Avoid:
- Bad Links
- Poor use of code
- Misleading Subject Lines
- Image-heavy emails
- Text-light emails
- Using CAPS
- Hash-busting (using non-letter characters to break up words)
- Actual Spam!
Insufficient Permissions
Each and every email you send out must have been agreed to by its recipient. Anything else is considered to be unsolicited mail, and internet service providers (ISPs) are adept at identifying mail sent without permission. NEVER use a purchased recipient list. One way brands are combating this issue is to establish double opt-in permissions. Subscribers not only sign up by providing their email address, but also with the first email need to click on a confirmation link to continue receiving emails.
Sender ID Issues
ISPs authenticate the identity of senders to ensure sources are legitimate. A service like ClickSend establishes this authentication on your behalf.
Legal Issues
All marketing emails must by law include the following:
- Visible and clear Unsubscribe option and instructions
- Clear and accurate Sender address
- Relevant subject line
- Physical mailing address
All unsubscribe requests must be honoured promptly.
Unappealing Content
All email marketing content needs to be valuable and relevant to its recipient. Email recipients are just as important as ISPs when it comes to avoiding being marked as spam. The customer needs to know exactly why they are receiving your messages. Your emails must be personalised and engaging.
Never:
- Send marketing emails to recipients you’ve not sent to in over six months (permissions do expire)
- Send too many messages – once a week at most is recommended
- Continue emailing contacts who are repeatedly deleting your emails without opening them
Contact our team at ClickSend for premium email marketing and SMS marketing that is spam-free and guaranteed to work for you.
