Dodging Your Customer's Spam Box

I get asked once in a while if there's a way to send e-mails to people so that the e-mail doesn't end up in the recipient's spam box.  That's a very valid question, as we have all had the experience of an e-mail we expected not arrive only to find out the system accidentally marked the message as spam.  You too may want to make sure that the recipients of your e-mail newsletter hit their inbox so that they're more likely to read it.

Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee that an e-mail WILL arrive in your recipient's inbox.  If there was such a way, the spammers would have it figured out by now and abuse it to no end!  When e-mail technology was developed over twenty years ago, the engineers could not have envisioned how badly e-mail will get abused.  And since to spam filter is perfect, once in a while a valid message hits our spam box, or a bad e-mail hits our inbox.

However, there are a few things you can do to increase the likelihood of your e-mails hitting your customers inboxes.  The tips below and the further resources at the bottom will give you a good guide.

1. Ask recipients to whitelist you.  A "whitelist" is the opposite of a blacklist.  A whitelist is a list of e-mails that you've said should bypass the spam filter and come right through.  For most e-mail programs, adding an e-mail address to their address book or contact list is sufficient for whitelisting.

2. Avoid popular trigger words & phrases.  Keep words like viagra, sex, casino, etc. out of your e-mail subject.

3. Keep your subject line short.  Long subject lines are a tactic spammers have used in the past to try to bypass spam filters.  Spam filters now check for these things too.

4. Don't have more graphics than text.  If you use graphics in your e-mail, use it sparingly.  If the ratio of graphics to text is too high, many spam filters will ding that e-mail.  I have had a few of my e-mails not arrive in the recipient's inbox because my signature contained a graphic, and my e-mails were relatively short.  Send graphics as attachments instead of embedding them in the e-mail.

Here are some more resources to help you with avoiding the spam trap:

Article from Check Market

Cast study on why a newsletter ended up in a spam box

Danemco Blog Post about Spam

Comments

• This is always tricky. Every spam filter is different so it is interesting to see what is marked as spam and what isn't. Legitimate e-mails can easily be labeled as spam, so these tips are very useful to help avoid the spam folder.
  by Jon on 02 February 2010 at 6:34 a.m.

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