Email marketing is a safe and easy way to get information about your business into the hands of thousands of readers. It’s cost effective and fast. But with so many millions of emails traveling through the system these days, it can seem almost inevitable that yours may end up in your customers’ spam folder. Marked as spam, this message will likely never get seen by the customer and in turn cost your business. If you are sending out a ton of emails though, avoiding the spam folder might not seem possible to you. Don’t worry; there are things you can do to get your emails read by customers instead of never even viewed.
First, it is important to follow all business laws pertaining to sending emails. The CAN-SPAM Act goes over these details. Not only will this help keep your messages out of the spam filters but it will save you money. Not following these laws could cause your business to be fined. In general, the laws simply protect consumers from businesses making false claims, representing themselves as someone else, or being deceitful or misleading in any other way. Be sure to read up on the laws before launching any additional email campaigns just to be sure you understand.
You’ll also want to get creative with your emails, especially if you are trying to sell something. Spam filters are designed to pick up on key words and phrases. There is no exact guideline as to what you can and cannot say but you’ll want to read up on some best practices to getting your emails opened. Some hot phrases that catch the attention of filters are: Act now! FREE. No-obligation. And Do it today!
Once you have those two pieces covered, what else can you do to help your email along into the customers’ inboxes? Here are my top 3 remaining tips:
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Image control
. It is important that your entire email not be an image or images. It is recommended to have at least two full sentences of text for every image you include. This also means if you are sending HTML emails that you also want to have the full text version available. Never include large attachments on your emails. And only add images that are applicable to the content of your message. Extra smiley faces or silly emoticons might not be the way to get your email noticed.
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Warm lists
. There is nothing worse than sending out a mass message to 500 people and over half of them being email addresses that are no longer valid. Using a service to check for these spam traps will save you a lot of work. Once those mailer daemon pings start to hit, your chances of ending up in a spam folder increase. Try only emailing users that request to be on your list to minimize the unused addresses. It’s also best to try to generate lead lists from interested parties and not just buy or steal email addresses from an outside source.
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Pay someone
. Finally, why not just skip all these steps and just hire a service to do all this for you? An email delivery product will take care of assisting you in the proper creation of emails with templates that get the most positive attention. They schedule messages to go out and can even take care of spam traps and junk filters. Take the guess work out of your email campaigns.
Whether you do it yourself or get help, one thing is clear; your emails are no good if they aren’t getting viewed. Keep your messages to the point but memorable and entertaining enough to make them interesting. Now go out there and bring in some new business.
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.