How to Keep Emails out of the Junk Folder

May 15th 2013 | By Steve Grant

Many businesses are finding their marketing emails being sent to spam or junk folders and never reaching the inboxes. This is because Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are becoming more stringent in their approach to identifying spam emails in an effort to clamp down on the real culprits.

Follow these 7 steps to avoid your email being lost in the spam void:

1. Take care with your content. Spam filters analyse your wording, so it is important to avoid the use of certain risky words like “free” “prize” or “promotion”. Overuse of exclamation marks is seen as possible spam material, especially if they are used in the subject line, so stick to using just one. Don’t overuse capital letters either. If you must capitalise for emphasis, stick to just one word rather than entire sentences.
2. Watch with the images. The size of the email can affect the deliverability, it’s best to stick to 30kb. Ensure the image to text ratio is well-balanced and make sure images are hosted at credible services.
3. Avoid purchased lists. Whilst they may seem like a great way to grow your email base, purchased lists can quickly affect your reputation as a sender. Contacts on the list can be full of dead addresses and spam traps and you could be branded as a spammer.
4. Use only reputable Email Service Providers (ESPs). ESPs are judged according to their addresses of their clients. ESPs that ban spammers and send only legitimate emails are seen as more credible. Additionally ESPs have the authority to contact mailbox providers like Gmail to approve your domain or IP address which should promote your deliverability.
5. Consider your “from” address. As well as monitoring content and a sender’s IP, some mailbox providers will examine the “from” field address. For this reason it’s best to avoid using an obscure field name like 123456@domain.com. Instead use credible “from” field names such as “contact@”. 
6. Get added to address books. Ask new subscribers to add your “from” address to their email address books. This will ensure that all future emails will be delivered to the inbox and not the junk folder. 
7. Monitor the deliverability. Set up a few accounts with Gmail, AOL, Yahoo and whoever else your customers use and then add these seed emails to the mailing list. Check the seed account after each mailing to see if the email has successfully been delivered. If you notice a problem, contact the ESP for advice.

You may spend hours overseeing the creative and content for the perfect email campaign, but it can all lead to poor open results, click throughs and ultimately conversions if the emails are failing to even reach the inbox. If you need help with email marketing, get in touch.