Email Marketing: 3 Ways to Avoid the Spam Filters

“Spam is a waste of the receivers’ time, and, a waste of the sender’s optimism.” ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

One of the biggest challenges for email marketers over the years has been getting through 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. Spam boxes, social and promotional boxes further segregate our messages. That makes 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’, etc.


Structure – It’s not enough to ‘not look like spam’ – you now need to ‘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. Try to structure your message more like a conventional email. That means saying ‘Dear [Name],’ and ending with ‘Best regards”.


You also need to avoid including elements that a client will associate with a promotional image or that will make you look less like a genuine correspondence. That means avoiding using too many hyperlinks – keep it to just one. Avoid using big images.


Sender Reputation
The most important thing to do is to make sure that your focus is on delivering great value over time. Doing this will encourage people to open your messages and read them. This will help to improve your ‘sender reputation’, which in turn will mean you don’t get blacklisted. While you’re at it, ask your readers to ‘white list’ your messages and add them to the main inbox?

Sometimes the best email marketing solutions are the simplest ones!

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Email Marketing: 3 Ways to Avoid the Spam Filters