Your team has put in a lot of hard work. You’ve designed your products, built a good marketing strategy, and are ready to interface with customers when the time comes to make a sale. But how do you get the word out? Email is certainly going to be one of the most important marketing strategies your firm employs, but it won’t get very far if your emails are unable to reach customer inboxes.
Spam email now makes up around 78% of all email sent, and spam filters catch the vast majority of these emails. How do you make sure your (hopefully) legitimate email makes it past these filters? Here are six steps:
1. Leave out extra junk – If you’re going to send a bulk email, chances are you’ll put a fair amount of work into it. But resist the temptation to do too much work. Leave the videos, the extra pictures, and the goofy colors and fonts out of the email. Not only will extras in your email distract readers from your message, they’ll also be easy targets for spam filters.
2. Send users to your website – This is similar to tip #1, but including extras that make your emails very interactive are also easy ways for filters to judge spam. Leave out the fillable forms and the attached documents and instead focus on getting your recipients from your email to your website.
3. Don’t buy lists or scrape for emails – Not only are these tactics unethical and often illegal, they’ll make you a prime target for even the simplest of email filters. Purchased lists are likely used by spammers, and email filters will make the connection without much trouble.
4. Craft a good subject line – Try to make your subject as simple and informative as possible. Extra marketing words like “free” or “guaranteed” are often employed by spammers. And avoid the temptation to be too clever or promise too much. Again, these are tactics used by spammers that will put you in the spam filter faster than you can say “autoresponder message.”
5. Speaking of autoresponder messages… - Since these messages are automatic and easy to forget about, you’ll do your firm a service by monitoring these messages closely. Make sure to take bounced recipients off of your email lists, as this can flag your IP for spam.
6. Be trustworthy – Include an “unsubscribe” option in your emails, and avoid “tricking” your recipients by directing them to unrelated pages or sending them too many messages. Remember, consumers can click the “mark as spam” button too.
If you’re struggling with email deliverability and your sender software’s built in capabilities aren’t helpful, use some of the above tips to make sure your emails reach their targets.