With email messaging, you’re essentially pleasing two audiences: your
human subscribers and sensitive spam filters.
Incorporating cutting-edge best practices into your approach can help
satisfy both and allow you to focus on what really matters: engaging
your email audience.
Spam filters “rank” email by a number of criteria – if the email fails
to abide by best practices, it runs the risk of not only being sent to
an individual subscriber’s junk folder, but it also runs the larger risk
of getting the original sender’s IP black-listed by an entire email
client.
Following are our best practices for avoiding the dreaded junk folder
and the “delete” button guillotine:
- Avoid using “trigger” words.
Some of these are obvious, like “Free,” “Save,” “$,” or “Discount,”
but some of them are less obvious, like “dear,” “click here,” and
“distribution.”
Solution: We run outbound emails through multiple tools to catch even the most innocuous uses of what seem like normal, everyday words.
Tip: Including the current date in the body (or subject line) of the
email increases credibility and helps mark your email as non-spam.
- AVOID USING ALL CAPS AND EXCESSIVE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!
Besides looking like you’re shouting, it can also flag your email as spam.
Solution: Avoid using all caps, and excessive exclamation points.
- Avoid using too many images, Flash, JavaScript and ActiveX.
Imagery can be a very powerful messaging mechanism, but in email, use
them in moderation. Spam filters will flag email with a low text/image
ratio.
This is because actual spammers use one GIANT image to avoid using
“trigger” words (see #1), and as a result, most image-based email
correspondence is flagged. (Look in your spam filter and count the
number of image-only emails, you may be surprised.)
Solution: A majority of your email should be text (the
most-trusted type of email is a personal letter between two people –
follow suite with your email newsletter). Use images sparingly, and
wisely – this is also easier on the human eye.
- Include a CAN-SPAM compliant footer.
Emails without unsubscribe links and physical mailing addresses reek
of spam, and tarnish credibility (to both spam filters and human
recipients).
Solution: Include both an unsubscribe link, a physical
mailing address and a link to your privacy policy, but be careful of
your wording and don’t sound too “official” with phrases such as “Stop
Further Distribution” and other overly-formal language. Make it
conversational and both the spam filters and your subscribers will
appreciate it.
- Keep your list squeaky clean.
When someone unsubscribes, they are doing you a favor. Don’t fool
yourself into thinking your next issue will change their mind. And pay
attention to your email bounce rate: Sending to email addresses that
have bounced repeatedly will result in a blacklisted IP address – and
then even your “good” subscribers won’t be hearing from you.
Solution: If a reader was kind enough to unsubscribe in the
first place (as opposed to simply marking you as spam) then honor their
request and remove them from the list. Plus, it’s about quality, not
quantity. A list of 10,000 active subscribers is worth much more than a
passive list of 100,000.
- Don’t get too big for your britches.
Large email files are slow, bulky and suspicious (think of a bear
in a bank wearing a ski mask – or don’t). Attaching PDFs, excess images
or running a message too long can all be triggers for the spam filter.
Solution: Keep the file size of your email between 20 and 40
kb. It’s not much, so make it count. A small size typically coincides
with the recipient’s attention span, so don’t waste opportunity with
bulky graphics and extraneous files.
- Are you sure? Are you sure you’re sure?
Sometimes site visitors will unknowingly sign up for your email
newsletter and later call you a spammer. Sometimes spammers will
knowingly sign up for your email newsletter for no apparent reason (the
Internet can be a strange place).
Sometimes site visitors will knowingly sign up for your email
newsletter and wonder why they never received it (they spelled their
email address wrong, it happens!).
Solution: Use a double opt-in confirmation process. As soon as
a site visitor enters their email address, send them a “Confirmation”
email to make sure it’s valid – and to make sure they’re truly
interested in your offer.
Even the most willing subscriber can sometimes miss out on your email
if their email provider does the thinking for them. In other words –
just because someone signed up for your email doesn’t mean it’ll get
through, due to overactive spam filters.
Solution: Explicitly ask your subscribers to “whitelist” your
email address – or add you to their address book. If they were willing
to sign up to receive your newsletter, chances are, they’re willing to
spend 30 seconds to make sure it gets through. (We can provide simple
instructions for all major email providers.)
- Address the subscriber, one at a time.
Some email programs will automatically filter out any inbound mail
without the recipient’s email address in the “To:” field. And most
humans don’t like to be addressed in impersonal ways (does anyone ever
turn around when you yell “Hey!” in public?) And if you’ve got thousands
(or more) emails to send, don’t send them all at once – this is a giant
red flag if you have multiple subscribers sharing the same ISP (which
you will).
Solution: Ensure that you aren’t using the CC or BCC field to
address your recipients, and make sure you’re using a program that
correctly places each individual’s email in the “To:” field.
And send your email in batches, or at a reduced rate so that ISPs don’t
view your correspondence as a flood of emails, often the dark work of
virus-makers and spammers.
You may have the greatest email newsletter known to man, but if you
send it at the wrong time, you run the risk of man (or woman) not even
knowing about it.
Solution: Current research indicates that Tuesday and
Wednesday between 2pm-3pm (local time based on the recipient) is ideal
for email distribution.
Sorry bosses, most email newsletters are checked at work, right after
lunch (when general malaise begins to set in). Leverage this to your
advantage and send your email when your target audience is most
susceptible to reading it.
- Pay attention to your subject line.
Your email newsletter may have something for everyone, but no one
will open it up to find out if you try to jam it all in the subject
line. Most email programs will display 60 characters or less (including
spaces).
Solution: Keep it short, sweet, relevant and enticing. The
goal here is to get them to open it – your enticing content is what will
get them to click on to your site.
- Design for the preview pane.
Your email subscribers attention span is a limited time offer. 52% of
email readers view their email exclusively in their email program’s
preview pane (according to ClickZ research).
Solution: Don’t design emails as wide as a webpage (or your
monitor, for that matter). Max out at about 600 pixels wide so that key
content is available in the preview pane. Left-align your company logo
and make sure your important content (or teasers to it) are visible,
too. And keep your call-to-action above the fold.
- Offer both text and HTML-based email.
Unlike Flex-Fit Hats, email messages are not a one-size-fits all
solution. And believe it or not, some people still browse the Internet
in Linux (yes, a text-based browser). Solution: Offer both a text-based
and HTML version of your email. Aside from catering to different types
of email subscribers, having both versions is also a hallmark of
legitimacy in the electronic eyes of ISPs.
- Assume images will not display.
So your Marketing Manager has this awesome idea to base your upcoming
membership-drive campaign off of the artwork on a famous Beatles album.
It scores points for nostalgia and delivers your message perfectly. But
all your email subscribers see is a tiny red X.
Solution: Images, aside from being a deliverability nightmare,
can also hide your message from subscribers. Don’t place important
content into images and use alt text so that those generic red X’s never
display.
- Test in multiple email programs.
Not everyone uses the email program you do. What looks good in Gmail,
may be a distorted mess in Hotmail – and might not even show up in
Outlook.
Solution: Learn what programs your subscribers are using and
make sure your email shows up correctly in each one. Test in every email
program you can find, and test with multiple spam filter settings.
Email messages will display differently depending on the program, so
make sure your email is universally optimized.
- Avoid temptation for innovation, in some cases.
Maybe you created an award-winning email graphic that your co-workers
(and maybe even subscribers) are oohing and ahhing over. Too bad they
don’t know they are supposed to click on it to learn more about your
offer.
Solution: Research indicates that more web users respond to
links at a higher rate when they are bold, blue text links. Stick with
what works until you have reason to do otherwise.
Think of the last cell phone you got. Chances are, there were some
buttons on it that you weren’t familiar with and some functionality that
came with a learning curve. You didn’t mean (because of the sheer
novelty) and you spent a few hours tinkering with it and getting used to
it. This is the exact opposite of how people read email and web sites.
No one wants to spend time learning your new set of navigations on a
weekly basis – no matter how innovative and “2.0” you might think it is.
Solution: Keep it simple and keep design consistent by using
the same template for your newsletter. Design changes should be
iterative for both branding, usability and sanity’s sake.
Everyone has that funny friend who can make them laugh at the drop of
a hat. And most people, after a while, just wish they’d give it a rest.
Don’t give your email subscribers too much of a good thing – or they
might experience stimulus overload.
Solution: If your email is weekly, keep it weekly. Don’t send
more frequent updates than what your readers have signed up for and
don’t assume that they like you so much that they’ll listen to
EVERYTHING you say. No one is that popular. Not even your funny friend.
- Analyze, Rinse and Repeat.
What worked a year ago, might not work next year (you can thank spammers for that).
Solution: Measure open rates, bounce rates, forwarding rates
and opt-outs to get a firm grasp on what is working and what doesn’t.
Monitoring subject lines, analyzing subscriber feedback and keeping your
list active (i.e. making sure subscribers are still reading) can keep
your list healthy, your messaging on-point and most importantly, your
subscribers happy.
- Add domainkey & SPF for your sending domain.
Domainkeys & SPF will make lot of difference to the
deliverability of the campaign. Together it will make sure that yahoo,
gmail identify the mail coming from a valid source.
- Warm up IPs and increase load gradually
It is recommended that when a fresh domain is setup with New IPs,
the sender should not start blasting millions of mails from day one. To
start with only few thousand mails should be sent and the load should be
gradually increased.
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