Email Marketing Best Practices
In comparison to the age old question of "How do I get my website to number 1 in the search engines?", the same answer generally applies to "How do I get my email past spam filters?" in that it is really all down to carrying out "best practices" by entering the correct content.
There is no one single thing that must be done regarding either of these questions, but more of an array of several things that must be done to gain the best results.
Many filters use a scoring system by generating a score based on all the negative elements of your email that constitute it being potential spam. You can keep this score low by carrying out the basic, essential practices of creating an email which will highly increase the chances of your email being delivered to your recipients' inboxes.
If your email looks like a typical spam email, with lots of big bold colourful text, shouting about special offers and demanding you to go to the site by "CLICKING HERE!!!" then it is very likely your email will be filtered.
"But what if my email is legitimately telling users about special offers with links to my site?"
Well, it can - but it must be done in a certain way. Of course, someone's spam filter may have specific rules setup on their machine or local network that make it harder to get around, so it is essential that you follow the below do's and don't's to ensure your email has the best chance of arriving in the recipient's inbox.
Don't:
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...use capital letters in an unnecessary manner:Words that are written all in capitals is deemed as SHOUTING and is a technique that spammers use; so this "technique" is looked for in spam filters. |
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...use lots of unnecessary punctuation:For example lots of !!!!'s will do you no favours. Couple them with capital letters and you will be deemed as shouting even LOUDER!!!!! at your recipients. |
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...use lots of special characters:This includes the asterisk, the aforementioned exclamation marks, question marks, dollar/pound symbols, percentage symbols etc. Your email may indeed include a section to advise users that there is 10% off, but keep the tone down and use it just once or twice to keep the spam score low. |
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...use lots of different text formatting: A mixture of various fonts, very large text, excess usage of boldness, italics and multicoloured text are all frowned upon as these are all techniques that spammers use. Keep the text within the email of a uniform style; i.e. one font for all of the text, larger text only being assigned to headers/titles and perhaps two colours in use throughout the text. Keep the email pleasantly appealing to keep the spam score low. |
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...make too many text alterations: Too many alterations to a piece of text via the WYSIWYG editor will add more and more snippets of code around that piece of text to determine the format. For example, highlighting a title, setting as bold and size 16 is fine - but dont then remove the bold, then re-add it and then maybe set the size as 18, before reducing the size to 14, then back up to 18; then adding italic and removing the bold etc etc - you get the picture. Each one of those changes will have added a piece of code around that title, which, when considered across the whole email, can cause spam filters to filter the email if they see a lot of "excess code" in the backend of the email. |
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...add too many links: Links within an email are of course one of the main elements of a marketing email or newsletter. However, they can increase the spam score if too many are used or they have been added incorrectly. For example a paragraph full of different hyperlinks will upset some spam filters. Likewise if the whole paragraph is set as one single hyperlink. Use links sparsely and try to avoid the spammers technique of a "click here" hyperlink with something like "View our shop for more info" (with "shop" being the hyperlink). |
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...place white text on a graphical background: Although a technique required to make your design visually pleasing, it is also a technique that spammers use to hide text from the recipient but to help get around spam filters. When placing text against a background colour, contrasting colours are recommended so the spam filters can see the text is presented clearly for the recipient to read. |
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...enter a form in the email: If you want to use a form, such as a questionnaire, then you would need to place a link in your email to a page on your website that contains the form. |
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...set hyperlinks to display the URL of the webpage youre linking to: For example, instead of creating a hyperlink like this: "Go to http://www.ekmresponse.com to find out more", create it like this: "Go to ekmResponse to find out more". The reason being, is that for a split second, the user is actually taken to an ekmResponse tracking URL so that we can monitor the link tracking for your campaign statistics. This means that the URL the user actually goes to, is not the URL that is visible to them. As a result, some, although very few, mail clients can interperate that link as a phishing link because the URL advertised is not the URL they are actually taken to when the user clicks it. |
Do:
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...add introductory text to remind the user why they are receiving the email: If the recipient is an existing customer, introduct the email with "As an existing customer, we would like to inform you of our current special offers" will immediately capture their attention if the subject and friendly from values failed to do so. If the recipient submitted their details via your site but several months ago then they may have forgotten, so "You are receiving this newsletter as a result of submitting your details on our website" will prevent the user from simply assuming the email is spam and potentially making a complaint. |
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...include clear contact details: Recieving an email with contact details, address, phone number, web address etc will all contribute in reassuring the recipient that the email they have received is not "spam" and is something genuine. Emails that are seen at first glance which contain none of this info whatsoever, with the only content being a typical "spammy" type hard-sell pitch will simply provoke the user to just delete the email, or worse, report it as spam. |
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...make sure the email is populated with correctly spelt text and grammar: An email containing typos and sentences that don't make sense can be caught by spam filters, as they deem the email is unprofessional and therefore created by a lazy spammer. |
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...use a similar volume of text and images within your email: Too many images can upset spam filters, as can emails with too much text. Striking a balance between the two is important and under no circumstances should an email only contain just one large image. |
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...enter a relevant subject and friendly from value: The subject must be relative to the content within the email and attract the recipients attention while the friendly from value needs to inform the recipient who the email is from. These values are very important and can mean the difference between your email being deleted or being saved to be read later on (if not immediately). |
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...personalise your email if possible: The ekmResponse system allows you to enter tags that display the recipients firstname, surname or both in the email they receive. This gives a sense of personalisation and importance to the email, encouraging the recipient to open it and can please the spam filters. However, if you do not have the recipients' names but still insert the tags, then a badly personalised email will only provoke the user to delete the email or even unsubscribe completely.
Users of macs with the built in mail software are also more likely to receive the email in the inbox if both firstname and surname is present within the email; as per the anti-spam algorithms in the mail client. |
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...create a clean coded email: An email with lots of excess or redundant backend code can cause your email to be filtered by some clients. This is very common when users copy and paste segments of text from other sources such as a website or a Word document etc. Doing so copy's the backend code of the source, which is irrelevant for an email as it upsets mail filters and can cause difficulty when trying to edit that text when creating the email. Although easy to do and saves time, it is much better practice to create the tabular structure of your email, then manually enter all the text/images and leaving the formatting of the text accordingly to the end. |
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...have a professional custom template written for you: Having a custom template written means your email will not contain any poor, excess or redundant code and will look its best in all mail clients. |
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...encourage the recipient to add you to their white list: Just because they may receive one email from you successfully, does not mean the next one wont arrive in their junk filter. Your email address or friendly from (if constant) values can be added to ensure future emails will arrive in the inbox. |
Words To Avoid
Following the above techniques will allow you to create a nice looking, effective email campaign with the best chances of deliverability. There are however, some words and phrases that no matter how clean your email, will cause problems due to them carrying their own spam scores directly. This is only intensified if the word/phrase is set in a large font, set as bold, italic or as a hyperlink etc.
Words and any associated words to avoid are such like:
Viagra |
Borrow |
Length |
Finance |
Nigeria |
Replica |
Gamble |
Increase |
Enhance |
Improve |
Loan |
Free |
Credit |
Diploma |
Quality |
With phrases that should be avoided being:
Buy now |
No risk |
Special Offer |
Risk free |
No obligation |
Click here |
Click to be removed |
Sale now on |
Have you been turned down |
Money back guarantee |
Following all the above will give your emails the best possible chance of obtaining inbox delivery, recipient engagement and ROI.
