Focus on email marketing: avoiding spam filters

One of the common problems for email marketing is the amount of emails which never even reach the recipients but instead get filtered into a spam folder. Here’s how to guarantee an optimal hit rate.

In this article we will:

1. Explain what spam is
2. Point out key spam indicators
3. Give best practice to ensure deliverability

What is spam?

Spam is the term used to describe unsolicited bulk emails. The characteristics are that the recipients have not agreed to have them sent and they are sent as a mass mailing.

Most email providers have spam filters. These look at a list of criteria to decide if your email is spam or junk – if they deem it to be so, the email will go straight into the recipient’s junk mail box and the likely hood is they will never see it.

One of the common mistakes that email marketeers make is simply buying long lists of emails in order to have a ready-made group to email. Since these are not people who have interacted with that brand or opted to have emails from them, the chances are this will be viewed as spam.

“We only ever email people who have ordered form hungryhouse, and never build our list from bought records,” says Graeme Horne, Marketing Director, hungryhouse.co.uk.

“This ensures we are only communicating with people who care about what we have to say and have an interest in our product, meaning email remains our most qualified marketing channel.”

What are the key indicators of spam?

There are certain things that a spam filter will automatically pick up on when scanning emails. These are to be avoided at all costs.

Phrases like “CLICK HERE”, “FREE!” and “BUY NOW!” are classic spammy phrases.

Other things to avoid are:

• Mentioning “money” or “cheap” a lot.
• Talking about an “urgent matter”.
• Lots of exclamations !!!!!!!
• USING ALL CAPS
• Colouring text in red or green

Best practice

There are a number of things you can do to avoid ending up in spam filters that go beyond merely avoiding the big no no’s listed above.

Make sure they are relevant

Engagement with your emails is an important factor that email providers will look at when deciding if your mail is spam or not.

“More and more, receiving systems are considering all aspects of user engagement when making filtering and blocking decisions (Gmail’s Priority Inbox and Facebook’s Social Inbox are two high-profile examples of this new dynamic),” says Joanna Milliken, Director of Email Products at ExactTarget.

“Several ISPs have already indicated that they are measuring such things as time spent viewing an email as an indicator of engagement.

“Sending messages that are quickly glanced at and quickly deleted will begin to have a negative effect on delivery efforts as such metrics are firmed up and implemented. Relevance will prove more important than ever under the new models measuring engagement.”

Create valuable content

If your emails are simply pushing products and giving offers your customers will quickly grow tired of opening them. By creating engaging content you can give them something extra which is of value to them and will encourage them to open your emails when they come in.

“Not only does the email need to contain information that is relevant or tailored to the interest of the customer, it needs to provide an incentive for the customer to continue to revisit the site and open future emails,” says Steve Ford, deliverability specialist at Experian CheetahMail.

“Look at how you can extend your email campaigns beyond the inbox and open up a continued dialogue with your target audience.  Without sticky content, you run the risk of the customer losing interest and ignoring your emails in future, which could eventually lead to your emails hitting the spam folder.”

Get your frequency right

Sending too many emails will have a detrimental effect on your click-through rates. By testing and by studying your customers you should be able to determine an optimal frequency for your email campaigns. Sending too often will lead you to the spam inbox either by the filter or through the recipient marking you as spam.

“Don’t overfill your customer’s inbox and address the frequency of your email – you will have more success sending one interesting, relevant email a week rather than bombarding customers with multiple emails about the same topic,” says Ford.

Make your messages a two way street

So many email marketing campaigns are simply talking to the customer and not looking for a reaction.

“As ISPs work to create new models based on user engagement, another metric that will garner much attention is reciprocal flow of communication,” says Milliken.

“Already, Google has begun measuring this, in combination with authentication, as a means of determining whether images in a message should be turned on by default.

“Senders who have received two replies from a Gmail user will find that their images have been turned on automatically, with no action required by the recipient.

“Conversely, ISPs may begin to penalize organizations that put their recipients at arm’s length. Most important, the use of “noreply@” should be avoided, as this sends a clear message that the sender does not consider email to be a two-way street?”