Internet Service Providers (ISP’s), such as Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo filter emails suspected of being spam. An increasing amount of opt in email marketing is mistakenly being caught by filters, which could be losing your revenue.
Read on for three key factors to focus on, plus our top tips on how to address them.
1. Reputation:
Consider your (sender) reputation: If recipients complain to either a blacklisting organisation or mark your email as spam in their email client, it can negatively affect your sender reputation. This can result in your emails going straight into the spam folder, or not being let through at all.
Measures to help maintain a good reputation include; using a double opt-in process to ensure signups are genuine, making opting-out of your messages as easy as possible (so recipients are more likely to opt-out than mark you as spam), and if you do send to non-organic data, ensuring any purchased lists are of extremely high quality.
Use a Reputable Email Marketing Provider: Good email marketing providers will have strong relationships with ISP’s and be able to advise you on best practice to help keep your reputation intact.
2. Content:
Manage frequency: If you are sending emails too frequently, you are in danger of encouraging your recipient to mark your mail as spam. Use a tool like contact frequency limiter, which will prevent people being sent multiple messages within a short period of time.
Consider relevancy: If you offer a variety of products, you may be sending non relevant information. Build in a preference centre for sign ups, which allow people to choose what they receive and when.
Consider multiple email account types: Ensure your HTML message works in all popular mail clients, with images both on and off. You can do this by either setting up multiple email accounts yourself and sending a test campaign to yourself, or using a tool such as inbox preview. If your recipients can’t view your messages, they are likely to mark them as spam.
Spam check: Check your final message using a good quality spam checker, to ensure no text or formatting within your message is likely to get it marked as spam. If you make any changes, even seemingly insignificant copy amends, you should always check again.
3. Permission:
Ensure confirmed/Verified opt-in: You are required to verify that the person who signs up to your mailing list owns the email address. This is done by sending a unique link to the attempted subscriber, which they must click to verify sign up.
Allow recipients to opt-out: If people aren’t interested in your message, don’t force them to add you as spam. You are legally required to allow them to opt-out. Treat opt-outs as an opportunity to gain further information from recipients, incorporate multiple options onto the unsubscribe landing page and feedback questions.