Email Marketing - Avoid Spam Filters
The majority of large Internet service providers now use rigorous spam protection mechanisms to trap unsolicited email before it gets into their customer's inboxes. Spam filters generally “rank” each email by a number of different criteria, and, if that email rates above a certain level (such as 10 spam points), then it is flagged as spam and quarantined or deleted.
To make sure your emails don’t get flagged as spam - and deleted before they even get to your subscribers - avoid using words such as ‘Free’, ‘£££’, ‘Save’, ‘Discount’, etc., in both the subject line and the content of your email.
Don’t use an open email relay to send your messages and ensure that the software you are using to send your campaign generates complete and valid email headers. A false or bad header will give your message a higher spam score and possibly even get discarded straight away.
Use a good outbound SMTP service.
Check with your current ISP and their terms and conditions because many ISPs prohibit the use of bulk email senders.
If your ISP does prohibit the use of bulk email sending, then consider the use of a third party outbound SMTP gateway such outMail by Prolateral.
Send test emails to yourself first
Send emails to an address that is protected by a spam filter and see what rules it triggers. For example proFilter is a anti-spam service provided by Prolateral and the message can be viewed in the portal to see exactly what rules were triggered and how “spammy” it thought the message was.
In this Series
Don't miss the rest of this series on email marketing. Follow the links below for the full article.
- Introduction
- Your Audience
- The Right Message
- The Law
- Opting out
- Address List
- Sending your email
- Avoiding Spam Filters
- Monitoring the campaign
- Regular communications