None of us like being inundated with spam. It clogs up our mail servers and can deliver harmful or fraudulent content to the unwary. The other problem with the amount of spam out there is that it can give genuine digital marketing content a bad name.
Top Ways to Avoid Falling Foul of the Spam Police
There are a variety of spam filters available, from basic freeware plugins to professionally designed applications. They all use different methods to determine what makes it to a recipient’s inbox and what gets consigned to that shadowy antechamber that is the spam folder.
If you have spent time, money and effort on designing the perfect mailshot for your target customers, the last thing you want is for it to be filtered out before the recipient can even see it. Here are our top five tips to help you reduce the likelihood of that happening.
1) Encourage opt in
The best way of ensuring your message reaches the recipient is to ensure your communications are invited, and that means having your clients opt in. This is a whole topic in itself, but in brief, that means having a clear opt in strategy and a webpage that is purely focused on that one objective.
Everyone likes something for nothing, so offering a free report, webinar or similar can be a great way to get people to sign up. Remember to always include an “unsubscribe” option so that people can change their minds if they want to.
2) Choose your words carefully
Some filters will flag up your email on the basis of its content or images. There are no specific words or phrases that are specifically off-limits, but you should be careful to ensure what you say is on-brand and relevant to your product or service offering. Always remember the importance of multivariate testing to see how different content will affect delivery of your communication.
3) Everycloud tech spam filtering
Where clients have a bespoke spam filtering application in use, such as the type provided by everycloud tech, it makes the process far more clear cut. These types of application are highly customizable, allowing users to set their own parameters for what is and is not spam.
In other words, if your clients are using everycloud there are no grey areas. The important thing is to ensure that you are on the non-spam side of the coin.
4) Remember, organic is healthy
The best way to build a contact list is the old fashioned way, through actually making contacts. This means leg work, but there are numerous ways to do it, through everything from face to face meetings at trade shows to social media campaigns where you encourage existing contacts and followers to share your content and spread the word.
Plenty of people out there will try to sell you lists, but do not be tempted. They are unlikely to be in your target demographic and will only increase the chances of you being flagged for spam.
5) Fight the decay
Procuring good contacts that welcome your communication is one thing. Retaining them is another. The data in your contact database will naturally decay by about 25 percent every year, under even the best circumstances. Ensure that decay is minimized by keeping in regular contact with your precious client base, and when someone new opts in, have a procedure to contact them without delay, to get the ball rolling.
Regularly cleanse your data to avoid sending communications to those who no longer want them or to outdated email addresses – both of which are mistakes that could increase the chances of you being flagged for sending spam. 🙂
