How to Avoid the Spam Filter
Get
Into the Primary Inbox
One of the biggest challenges for email marketers over the years has always been beating the spam filter.
The job of the spam filter on most email providers is to prevent unwanted messages from getting in.
Especially those that might contain viruses, phishing scams, or other harmful types of content.
Today this has become even harder though.
Now we not only have spam boxes
but also social and promotional boxes that further segregate our messages
and make it hard for any of our messages to gain attention.
The good news is that there are strategies you can use to combat both these issues.
Language
One of the first and most important tips for avoiding the spam box
is to make sure you avoid using the kinds of words and phrases that computers associate with spam.
This is similar to the way that Google looks for keywords,
except this time the keywords are a bad thing.
Examples of words to avoid include things like buy, free, discount, hurry and Viagra.
Hopefully, that last one isn’t something you would be writing about anyway!
Structure
If you want to get into the main inbox, then it is not enough to not look like spam
you now need to also look like a personal message.
To do this, you should take advantage of the feature in your autoresponder that allows you to use
the recipient’s name in the message.
Likewise, try to structure your message more like a conventional email.
That means saying Dear [Name],
ending with Best regards,
Likewise, you also need to avoid including elements that a client will associate with a promotional image
or that will make you look less like genuine correspondence.
That means avoiding using too many hyperlinks
keep it to just one and it means avoiding using big images.
Sender Reputation
The most important thing to do though,
is to make sure that you are focussing on delivering great value over time.
If you do this, then people will open your messages and they will actually read them.
This will help to improve your sender reputation,
which in turn will mean you don’t get blacklisted.
And while you’re at it, why not ask your readers to white list your messages
and add them to the main inbox?
Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones!