SPAM: Prevent your emails from ending up in the trash

How to avoid spamming in email marketing? 

The positive or negative image that is reflected in the minds of people after being impacted by your marketing campaigns indicates their success or failure.

In other words, this campaign can mean the loyalty of a client or the definitive loss of it.

Do you evaluate the possible factors in launching an email marketing campaign? There are multiple factors to evaluate the success or failure of a campaign.

Among those factors?

⚠️ The percentage of openings.

⚠️ The bounce rate.

⚠️ The number of clicks on the links that the email has.

⚠️A volume of users who marked the email as Spam.

Spam 

This last factor is also known as the spam problem in email marketing. It can never be 100% extinguished but it can be controlled by you in the vast majority of cases.

The different email sending tools available on the Internet offer you different solutions. For example, the Smartdelivery shipping mechanism.

I’ll tell you about this option as well as special configurations to send quality emailing in this article. We will respond to the following:

❓ Why should you be very careful with the issue of Spam when doing email marketing?

❓ What are the triggers for an email to be marked as spam? How to avoid it depending on the origin of the problem?

❓How to avoid being marked as Spam by email managers or users?

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT EMAIL MARKETING?

Why should you avoid spam in your emails?

Spam, although it may not seem like it, gives a very bad image to the brand that sends the email. It carries very serious consequences in terms of its results.

And that ‘s not all!

Spam also has very negative consequences. Both for the email address and the “domain” of the account that makes these deliveries.

A reputation that is damaged with email marketing will have a really difficult time improving its image again. This is all added to the fact that the user’s perception of the business changes dramatically.

Domain Penalty

Several years ago, some servers, including Google in its Gmail, introduced several changes that radically affected email marketing campaigns.

Since then, the search engine has the power to classify the emails as appropriate. Yes, google will receive your emails. And it will automatically send it to main, social, promotions, updates or spam, depending on how the email is classified.

Other servers or ISP’s such as Hotmail, also automatically classify messages. It will consider whether or not it is spam based on the reputation of that account.

In this sense, we find some of the main most common mistakes made in email communication strategies. Not taking into account the configuration requirements of the domain used and the email marketing tools.

As well as the configuration of the email account.

Loss of credibility

In the middle of the Information Society, many companies use email marketing to execute their massive advertising campaigns. However, they forget in some cases that each client is different and has their own priorities..

AVOID SPAM

Bad segmentation and delivery of email, can lead the public to interpret said email as Spam

Once this happens, the following emails will automatically go to junk email (or otherwise known as “spam”), and won’t be received by the user.

Think of the bad image you are giving your business every time this happens with your emails; You go from being a brand of interest, to being a “heavy burden” and end with your reputation plummeting.

What are the main causes of SPAM with email marketing and how to avoid them

Therefore, it is essential to take some precautions to meet the objective of reaching the public or user in a friendly and pleasant way.

Did you know that simple practices like using a lot of capital letters in the subject can be considered spam and turn your email marketing campaign into a failure?

Abusing the use of highly commercial terms such as “free”, “promotion”, “offer”, etc. or synonyms of them, as well as sending an email with many links or only images, can also penalize you.

These are just some of the most common errors that come to mind, but for you to follow me in more detail, we are going to see some considerations to avoid being marked as spam, as follows:

• Rejected by ISPs or mail managers (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.).
• Rejected by the users themselves.

How to avoid being marked as spam by ISPs?

However, one of our objectives when sending an email that is part of our email marketing campaign is to prevent ISPs from marking the information that we want to send to our customers as spam.

To avoid falling into this trap, follow the procedure below step by step.

Personalize your domain

It does not happen with all platforms, but it does with a large majority, in which you must meet some requirements to pass the first screening of the servers. .

To begin, you will have to customize the domain for which you carry out your email marketing campaigns.

Thus, you will be able to prevent your IP from being shared with other clients who use the same platform as you and do so in an intrusive way.”

Once you have selected your domain, through the option “Manage DNS” of your email address server, you will have to create a new CNAME record that points to your main web domain.

Generally, to verify that this configuration has been updated correctly, you will have to enter the new custom domain in your email marketing tool and verify that it is active.

Modify SPF records

From here, and before starting to carry out marketing campaigns, you must ensure that your sending platform is recognized by the mail server as a secure tool for the servers.

This is usually a manual modification or requested from support depending on the type of hosting server you use, and it will be the same email marketing platform  and parameters you’ll need to provide, that I previously indicated.

Do a send test

Once you have achieved all of the above, you must perform a send test to verify that everything is correct.

“Do not treat it as just any test, run a real drill to make sure your sent emails are received and displayed correctly.”

According to many experts, sending the first email is key so that subsequent emails to customers can have the desired effect.

Correct design of the newsletter and revision of the HTML code

Finally, the composition of the emails is another element to take into account. Although it may not seem like it, ISPs differentiate between the body of the email and the HTML codes. Therefore, each element used will be looked at with a magnifying glass.

However, some email marketing tools put at your disposal a spam report that allows you to assess the suitability of your email, as well as pre-designed templates by which you will avoid problems

In case of not using a pre-designed template, and before sending, it is essential to filter the message by the spam report in order to obtain the opinion of the system.

You have to be proactive before ending up in the user’s spam tray, don’t you think?

How to avoid being marked as spam by users?

Overcoming the filters of all ISPs and preventing a server from sending your mail to the spam folder is only the first step. 

Let’s not forget that the user also has the ability to move our emails to the junk folder.

In addition, when they perform this action, the server automatically sends all our subsequent emails to it.

Use persuasive wording

You should always take care of the writing of your emails and avoid writing your emails to sound too commercial. 

Although it seems incredible to have to remind you of this, there are many users who receive numerous emails a day and do not want to waste time with pure promotional email. 

Be a little more formal. Most of your subscribers do not like excessively cluttered emails with exclamation marks, emoticons or other types such as dollar symbols.

You should also avoid the abuse of the imperative mood in your emails, with phrases such as “click here” or ambiguous or unclear phrases.

Avoid using highly commercial language

I think I’ve already said it on other occasions, but it doesn’t hurt to insist on the subject.

Terms such as “free”, “discount”, “buy now”, “promotion”, “offer” or the like will only harm us and increase the chances that we will be sent directly to the spam folder.

Therefore, put yourself in the shoes of a person who does not stop receiving business correspondence in their mailbox at home and online. Most do not like this!

The same thing happens with email marketing; people do not like to receive commercial promotions in a very explicit way and mail managers know this and penalize these things quite a bit. 

Follow a more or less regular and non-abusive sending frequency

Another element that very few take into account is the indiscriminate sending of emails.

As I said before, the user has a limited time and does not want to waste it by deleting emails from topics that they have already read before or with similar information.

Similarly, if a user constantly receives emails from the same sender, they will almost certainly be sent to the junk folder, affecting the domain’s image and reputation.

Therefore, segment your database and calculate very well the periods of time before executing each one of your email marketing campaigns.

Final Recommendations

In mass email campaigns you face two very different enemies (machines and users) for a single objective, not to end up in the spam folder.

The first, with which you must beat a computer, I am talking about ISPs or email managers of platforms as well known as Gmail or Hotmail.

This artificial intelligence can end up sending us to the junk email folder.

Therefore, it is advisable to fight it with you own weapons, for this:

• Customize your sending domain (your IP address can be your own worst enemy), and later modify the SPF records on your mail server.
• Send a test email, discreet, without attracting attention so it doesn’t get flagged as spam, for sending it too prematurely.
• Check the HTML code if you use a specific newsletter design.

Now, if you overcome the filters of the ISPs, your next opponent will be your own subscribers (as you know, they have the same power as the ISPs to send you to Spam folder, never to be heard from again), So:

• Take care of your writing. Be friendly, committed and persuasive with your client. In short, take care of it and try to be convincing when promoting your product.
• Avoid business terms that elicit customer anger, as well as exclamation marks, imperative mood, and unclear phrases.
• Send with the appropriate frequency. A daily routine can create despair in your customers and they will send us to spam, while the extreme opposite could cause someone to forget you exist.

So you already know! Create emails with suggestive messages, with a unique format, a pleasant wording and a frequency of sending that respects the schedules of your users.

Remember that your goal is to keep your subscribers happy and preserve the image of your company in order to succeed with your email marketing campaigns.

What other recommendations could you give us to avoid SPAM? 👇🏻

Jose Facchin , 11 March 2021