how to get your emails into the inbox
There's no question the most important part of any email campaign is ensuring your email makes it into the inbox. Sadly there's no guarantee you'll be able to deliver one hundred percent of your emails. However, it is achievable and there are a number of techniques you can use to avoid being caught in filters.
Here are our top ten tips to avoid the filters:
watch out for the trigger phrases and words
To give your email the best chance of being delivered try to avoid including any words or phrases that might cause you to get caught in a spam filter. As few things to avoid include: over use of words like free, guaranteed, investment, and pharmaceutical. Overuse of phrases such as free delivery, money off and special offer.
newzapp comes with a built in spam checker to help you avoid these traps. The key part if overuse. Everything is fine if it's in context and makes sense with the rest of your email content.
run your email through a mail filter before sending the campaign
newzapp comes with a built in spam checker to help you avoid trigger phrases and words. This is run using spamassassin, however you can also use this website if you would like more detailed information on your spam score and what improvements you can make to your email.
monitor delivery to accounts like Yahoo!, Hotmail and Outlook
When you set up your test group, if can be worth including a Yahoo!, Hotmail and Outlook account. These major email clients cover up to 83% of all the major email clients used, so you have peace of mind knowing your email will deliver and render correctly across the board.
ask your subscribers to add you to their safe list
Asking your subscribers to add you to their safe senders list will help ensure the subscriber's server won't catch your email in a filter and block it. Filters are updated and learn subscriber behaviour, so being on a safe senders list will make sure your emails are delivered every time.
avoid using upper case font for entire sentences
Excessive capitalisation and punctuation is the equivalent of shouting at someone. It's also standard practise of spammers, so avoiding this will help you get past the filers and into the inbox.
don't over use bold text
Again unfortuately another standard practise of spammers, so it's a good idea to avoid doing this. If you want to highlight a particular area or phrase of text, linking it to a relevant website page or PDF will server you much better. This will at least underline your text and can change the colour of it, helping it to stand out. A descriptive link will also help improve the clickthrough rates.
avoid using very large font sizes
Large fonts size are again the equivilent of shouting at someone. Although they may get their attention, if might not be for the right reason.
don't use very small font sizes
This is another common practice of spammers, where they are also trying to avoid the filters.
become a member of the Internet Service Provider feedback loops
A feedback loop from the Internet Service Provider will provide you with information on the subscriber's email address if required. For example, AOL will let you know when you have has a complaint. You can remove that email address from your database so you can avoid getting blacklisted.. Most Email Service Providers should manage these for your automatically.
never embed images in your email
This makes the emails very large and difficult to deliver. Arrange for your images to be downloaded once the email has been opened. Most Email Service Providers should do this for you, quickly enough that your subscriber won't notice the difference.
email service providers like newzapp achieve higher delivery rates...
There are many ways to ensure high delivery rates. The most important thing you can do is choose a reliable email marketing service provider, they're able to achieve much higher delivery rates. Make sure your email service provider supplies you with the following:
- Email templates tested for high delivery
- Servers with excellent reputation
- Regular server reputation monitoring*
- A team of experts who can advise on best practice
- Feedback loop monitoring
- Excellent relationships with major Internet Service Providers
- Automated bounce cleaning to assist delivery rates
- HTML coded for you in an optimised style by the system.
* newzapp servers monitored via Senderscore.