It's 4.50pm, you've got to leave the office by 5.00 and you still have an email to send to your list! Don't worry, you'll just about get the job done in the time allocated. 5pm, the email has been sent and you can go off and enjoy your evening...However, did you know that a massive percentage of all emails sent DO NOT actually make it to an intended recipients' in-box. Rather it is intercepted and banished to the JUNK box by whiter than white spam filters. So whilst you're out enjoying yourself, glad that you got the job done in 10 minutes - much of that effort could have been wasted!
Here's a useful list of the top 10 things that you should try to include to ensure that you're wonderfully crafted email is more or less guaranteed to be sent to the JUNK box. Whilst there are exceptions to every rule, follow these steps and watch your % delivered, open-rates and click-through rates DROP.
The top 10 ways to ensure your emails DON'T reach an inbox:
- Embed flash and rich media images into your email
- Construct image only messages or use large images and no text above the fold
- Use a person's name in the FROM address
- Write your subject lines in CAPITAL LETTERS
- Don't limit the number of words in a subject line
- Combine the overuse of punctuation with words like FREE and YOU
- Include as many font sizes as you like in as many colours as you like
- Include languages such as Javascript and ASP in your code
- Don't use inline styling, use CSS instead
- Ensure you use 'click here' to highlight links
To find out if more of your emails are ending-up in spam filters than in-boxes, Louise Colligan, RBI's Head of Email Marketing, provides some useful guidelines:
'1. Check your open rate - 20-30% open rate is a guide. If the average suddenly drops then the email is likely to be in the junk folder. Also check for abnormally high bounce rates.
2. Understand how spam filters work. Spam filters operate by looking at a list of criteria and assign points to criteria such as spammy phrases: e.g. click here/buy now and poor coding. A campaign receives a "spam score". If it exceeds the threshold the email is sent to the junk folder. Thresholds vary and are set by the person who installed the spam software. A general rule is to ensure your email is below 5. It is unlikely to be one element of an email that causes a score of 5, but different elements that make up the email. If you want to find out what score your email will receive then it's advisable to run your html code through a reliable spam checker or content checker prior to sending the email. There are many free tools available online.
3. The Spam criteria list is growing all the time. On web email services such as hotmail and yahoo people often use the 'junk' or this is spam button as a means of unsubscribing. This information is collated and the email client builds a picture of the reputation of a sender and can often lead to the 'from address' being blacklisted.
4. Spam filters have both white and black lists of senders and keywords to look at. A white list ensures mail from the listed e-mail addresses, domains, and/or IP address will always be allowed and the opposite occurs for information on the blacklist.'
Further reference:
Tools for spam checking:
http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/
http://www.lyris.com/resources/email-marketing/contentchecker/
http://www.swiftpage.com/support/spamcheck.htm
Tools to check subject lines:
http://www.localnews.biz/subjectLine/ValidateSubjectLine.asp#
