SPAM filters are becoming a serious problem for legitimate email marketers. In 2006, 40% of all email sent throughout the world was considered spam. As a result, filters are stepping up their efforts to block this unwanted mail and many of your commercial emails may be inadvertently filtered as well; there are more emails being bounced today than ever before.
Getting email through to your subscribers is critical, especially if email plays a key role in your business. You need to count on reaching your readers.
Avoiding the adverse affects of spam filters is not difficult. It merely involves following some simple guidelines to ensure the maximum results from your email campaigns.
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- Use a double opt-in mailing list. This is when you send a confirmation email in order to get the reader:%$#146;s permission to add them to your mailing database. This ensures that you do in fact have the subscriber:%$#146;s permission, which will prevent unjust accusations of sending unsolicited emails.
- On the sign up page, tell subscribers to whitelist your domain or add it to their address book. You should also include this in the welcome email you send to new subscribers.
- Send your email as plain text instead of HTML since the latter tends to get blocked a lot more by the filters.
- Avoid using various trigger words or phrases that are flagged by filters as being spam. It:%$#146;s not that you can:%$#146;t use them; it:%$#146;s just that you should use them sparingly. The filters will block your email if it contains too many trigger words. You can find a list of typical trigger words to avoid in your email:%$#146;s subject line and body at [http://www.andreaoneill.com/spamtriggers.html].
- Before you send your email out to your entire list of readers, perform a dry run on some free email accounts such as hotmail, yahoo, and gmail. You can play around with the filter settings on each account and see if your email makes it through. Another good idea is to run your email through a content checker that will determine if it is at high risk of being flagged as spam. There are a number of free content checkers available on the Internet, just do a search on Google.
- Finally, the most important thing to do is follow the CAN-SPAM laws regarding commercial email. This includes items such as containing an unsubscribe link in every email and including the mailing address of the company or person sending the email. The CAN-SPAM act can be found at [http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm].
It is difficult to tell how long spam will continue to cause problems for legitimate email marketers. Hopefully one day the problem will subside, but until then you will need to follow the items highlighted above to increase the chances of your email being delivered successfully. By following these guidelines, you will not need to worry about getting your email through to your readers; you can spend more time on the email campaign itself, which is far more important.
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