What is "Hitting the Inbox"?

One of the greatest problems facing email marketers is making sure that your email goes to the user's inbox instead of the spam folder. When everything is driven by whether a user opens an email, that means that the user needs to actually SEE the email first. In truth, how many of us check our spam or junk folders regularly?

Getting your marketing email to actually go into the inbox is one of the most complicated parts of email marketing (and the part that fails the most often). Here are ten tips to keep your email from ending up in the junk folder.

1. Get on the Hotmail and Yahoo! White Lists

Hotmail and Yahoo! both keep lists of approved senders. Once you're on that list, you'll almost always go into the inbox. If you send a particularly spammy email, however, you can be removed from the list. The process can be frustrating and take a long time, but it's well worth it.

2. If You're Using Your Own Server, Make Sure it "Drips" the Messages

Spam filters at most email providers look to see how many messages you're sending at a time. If you're sending to a large list, even if you have a fast and efficient email sending server, have the server "drip" the messages out slowly. You really don't want more than a couple thousand to hit any one email provider per hour if you're playing it safely.

3. Break Large Lists Into Smaller Ones

There are many reasons to break large email lists into smaller ones, but the best reason is that doing so will mean that the spam complaints that you receive when you send your email won't be in one huge mass. It is inevitable that even loyal subscribers sometimes mark you as spam. If you send your large list in smaller segments, the email provider (Hotmail, MSN, etc.) will see less spam complaints bundled together at one time.

4. "Clean" Your Email List Frequently

Most, if not all, email providers' spam filters penalize your domain or IP with a higher spam score (meaning you are more likely to end up in the junk folder) if they see that you are sending emails to bad email accounts. A bad email account is an address that doesn't exist, has been disabled or has a full inbox. These addresses should be cleaned (or "pruned") from your email list regularly to avoid this. If you allow them to add up on your list, you will eventually be flagged as a spam provider.

5. Provide a Clear Unsubscribe Link

Nobody likes it when somebody unsubscribes from their email list. However, providing a clear way to unsubscribe (and then honoring that unsub quickly) means that users are less likely to get frustrated and just mark you as spam. The number one criterion for ending up in the junk box is the number of spam complaints that you receive, so avoiding them at all costs is critical.

6. Encourage Your Customers to Add You as a Friend or Contact

Once a user has added you to his or her contact list, friend list or address book, you will always end up in their inbox. Use every opportunity to encourage those on your email list to add you as a contact. Comm100 suggests doing it in the email sign up conformation email, on the confirmation page and during most customer service transactions. A typical way to ask customers to do this is to say, "Ensure that you continue to receive the quality information from us that you enjoy by adding us to your contact list."

7. Test Your Email to Seed Addresses BEFORE You Send to the Main List

Before you send your entire email list the message you've worked so hard on, send a test message to each of the big email providers (Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN, Gmail, AOL and one generic office address that is viewed in an Outlook client). Send the test email using the exact same server and information that you'll use with your main list. If you end up in the junk box on the test send, then you'll end up in the junk box on your main send. The pre-send test means that you can try different subject lines and email content to try to figure out what sent you to spam.

8. Don't Have Sloppy HTML Code

Spam filters check for bad html code, particularly if it looks like the code was done in Microsoft Word and then thrown into an email. Use a professional coder (preferably one who has done email templates before and knows the best way to make them resolve properly in an inbox) or a template provided by your email sending partner.

9. Don't Use "The Big Image"

Sending an email that's all one big image file is a bad idea for many reasons. Foremost among those reasons is that spam filters look for those types of image-based emails. Big image files often carry hidden messages that would normally get caught in spam filters (words like "free"), so, when a spam filter can't read any real text in an email and only sees an image, it assumes the worst.

10. Don't Write Text that Sounds Like a Spammer!

This one should be obvious! The more "spam-like" text and phrases your email uses, the less likely it is to end up in the inbox. There are a number of free software solutions to check the "spam score" of an email before you send it, but there are also basic rules.

Don't use the word "free" too many times.
Don't use ALL CAPS.
Don't use lots of colored fonts.
Only use one exclamation point at a time!
Stay away from words you'd see in spam:  drugs, porn, guaranteed winner.

If you've seen it used in a spam message that you received, don't use it in your own email message!

Even if you do all of these things and do them perfectly, you may still end up in the junk box. Email spam filter criteria change almost daily and can be impacted by things that you have no control over. However, if you, as a habit, send good email that your clients want, you'll get into the inbox more often than not. Be sure to follow the above guidelines because, once an email provider thinks that your email is spam, it is very hard to get back into the inbox!

One of the first steps to getting into the inbox is to choose a quality email partner. Comm100, who provided you with this spam tip list, offers a completely free, hosted email and newsletter solution. It's both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground and into the inbox!

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About the Author:
Comm100 Network Corporation
provides open source and free hosted customer support software for small and medium businesses. Comm100 fully integrates multiple communication channels, including Live Chat, Newsletter, Forum, Knowledge Base and Ticket System. All Comm100 products are delivered as FREE SaaS/Hosted applications and completely FREE.
For more information about how to improve customer service quality and efficiency with Comm100 software, you can visit: http://www.comm100.com

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Below we have listed a few tips to help you make the most of your Email Marketing campaign.

Ask for permission
Never send an email message or newsletter to recipients who did not opt to receive your marketing communication. Having a large but disinterested subscriber base is of no use to anybody. Spammy messages are quickly ignored, deleted or filtered out by spam filters, and spammers are not well regarded in any industry. Sending unsolicited marketing emails harms your brand’s reputation and potential customers’ perceptions of your brand. Thus, always make sure recipients want to receive your newsletter and make it easy for them to unsubscribe if they wish to.

Keep your subscriber list up-to-date and targeted
Ensure your subscriber list is up to date by checking which emails bounce, or which addresses are no longer in use. To boost ROI, divide your subscriber list up and target your newsletter recipients based on their interests and preferences. By offering your readers content they are interested in, you will not only increase your mailers’ opening rates, but also your customers’ trust.

Increase opening rate
The newsletter’s subject line influences the open–rate. Hence it is important to make sure the subject line is catchy and relevant to the newsletter’s content. Keep the subject line short and try different approaches to see which returns the best results.

Newsletter timing and content
Experiment by sending newsletters on different days of the week and at different times of the day to see which combination receives the best opening and response rates. Furthermore, provide your readers with informative, good quality content and make sure that calls to action are clearly visible. Keep the newsletter short and sweet and proof-read your content a few times to make sure that there are no errors.

It’s in the (contact) details
This may sound obvious, but many businesses don’t take this aspect of email marketing into consideration. You need to make it easy for your readers to contact you through your newsletter. Include your telephone number, website URL and physical address as well as links to your brand’s social media profiles. The email address you use to send the newsletter should be checked regularly so that you can respond quickly to queries.

Monitor and tweak
Measure the overall response rate per email campaign and track what people are doing with your newsletter. In your email management dashboard you should be able to see how many people have opened the newsletter, how many have clicked on links in the newsletter, how many times it’s been forwarded and so forth. Use this information to determine what your readers like and dislike and use this information strategically.

The above list is not all-inclusive but should provide a good starting point for making your Email Marketing campaigns more effective. Whether you are looking for an email software solution, a fully-managed solution or simply newsletter content creation, we will gladly assist.