If you’ve ever done an email newsletter with a large reach, you’ve probably noticed that not all emails reach the audience and, for some reason end up in spam. All the time, effort, and money put into creating high-quality newsletters only for them to end up in the junk folder! Let’s find out how to avoid this. Spammers are not allowed to read this article!
How Spam Filters Work
Mail services mercilessly send emails to spam if they contain viruses, are suspected of being fraudulent (phishing attacks), were sent from blacklisted IP addresses, and for many other reasons, which we will discuss below.
The reason for this is the thorough work of email services, which strengthen sanctions, taking care of the safety and comfort of users. That is why it is important to realize that emails should not only please the audience, but also email providers.
And there are two pieces of news for you: bad and good ones. Let’s start with the bad news: each mail system uses its own algorithms to filter out spam and doesn’t reveal its secrets, because that would show the way for real spammers to get into our inboxes.
The good news is that some criteria for spam filters are known. And knowing how to avoid those will greatly increase the chances that you will deliver the email to your readers.
Best Practices for Email Content
1. Avoid Spam Trigger Words
First and foremost, remove any spam trigger words from the subject line and body of the email. Those could be words like “free,” “guaranteed,” or even “click here.”
While these ideas may sound good and appealing, mailbox providers view them as serious spam concerns that will seriously affect your inbox placement rates.
2. Reduce the Weight of the Email
According to Email on Acid research, an email larger than 100KB may be too heavy to reach the recipient. We are talking about the weight of HTML code without pictures and attachments.
To reduce weight, remove all unnecessary code: for example, in some cases, hidden formatting tags may be transferred to the text of the email.
3. Personalize Content
Make brand emails interesting and useful to the audience, and divide users based on their gender, age, interests, and other data. Send personalized newsletters to the selected groups.
You can also offer subscribers to customize the frequency of newsletters and choose the type of content they’d like to receive. Most importantly, don’t forget to include an unsubscribe link so that uninterested users can easily cancel your newsletter.
4. Maintain a Good Text-to-Image Ratio
You should also keep an eye on the size of images: images that are too large will take a long time to load. Are you sure that your audience will just patiently sit and wait? You have to find the perfect balance between your text and images. So try to write texts that consist of at least 500 characters. If the email is shorter, adding an image will increase its chances of not getting into the spam folder.
Therefore, emails that consist of a couple of lines of text and links are the first candidates to be targeted by a spam filter.
Technical Steps to Improve Deliverability
1. Implement SPF & DKIM
Now, if we talk about the technical aspect, you should first set up authentication via SPF and DKIM records. This is necessary so that the recipients’ email providers see that the email came from a claimed domain from a registered sender. Setting up authentication via DKIM and SPF will improve the deliverability of your mailings.
DKIM via cryptographic signature helps to validate the sender’s domain, while SPF records authenticate the message via verification of the sender’s server.
2. Keep the Email List Clean
Most importantly, you should collect the email address database yourself. Do it only through a subscription form. Don’t collect email addresses from different forums or buy mailing lists.
Building and Maintaining a Good Sender Reputation
Email deliverability is directly related to the reputation of the sender. Each email provider uses its own algorithms to calculate this metric. Services analyze dozens of indicators, such as complaints about spam in previous mailings, the presence of a domain or IP address in a blacklist, and the number of non-existent addresses.
In 83% of cases, mailings don’t get to the inbox precisely because of the sender’s low reputation. You can track this indicator with the help of special services like Sender Score and others.
Analyzing and Monitoring Your Email Campaigns
User behavior is the best indicator of newsletter quality. If you see that the open rate and click-throughs are high, then you are doing a good job. But if emails are not getting through (high Bounce Rate), then users are unsubscribing or complaining about spam.
If you keep sending out an email with bad stats, you risk getting trapped in spam filters forever and not reaching users.
In addition, A/B tests will help to check which variant is better perceived by the audience and optimize the email at once. This will also affect the email statistics and user behavior.
Conclusion
Overall, carefully go through all the tips mentioned, and write the text of the newsletter as if you were going to send it to a friend you’ve known for a long time, not to an audience of thousands of users. This will surely help you maximize your message delivery rate and avoid spam filters. Good luck!