spam emails

How to Avoid Email Spam Filters

The Snapshot

  • Email spam filters are constantly increasing in sophistication
  • Spam filters block legitimate emails on a regular basis
  • There are steps you can take to ensure that emails do not get classed as spam
  • Email marketing software enables you to have full visibility of  email campaigns

After you have carefully crafted the perfect marketing email you don’t want it to get blocked by the intended recipients spam filter. A spam filter is basically a piece of software that examines incoming emails and attempts to identify any messages that it considers to contain dubious content.

Legitimate emails that get classed as spam mails are known as ‘False Positives’,  this happens when some content within the email or the subject line triggers the filter to class it as spam.

Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and individual email clients such as Gmail and Hotmail all contain various spam filters through which every email is screened. The main reason for this is to stop potentially harmful and malicious emails from being opened by their users.

As a result of the increased precautions in this area over recent years, an increasing number of genuine emails are being categorised as spam.

What Steps Can You Take To Avoid Spam Filters

There are a few simple steps that you can take to make sure that the majority of your marketing emails reach their intended target. Some of these include:

  • Avoid using words or phrases that will trigger spam filters
  • Don’t use only capital letters
  • Break up images with text
  • Never only include images
  • Ensure that all HTML is balanced with text and images
  • Include a plain-text alternative with your HTML email
  • Don’t use video, Flash, or javascript
  • Don’t use exclamation points

By following general guidelines such as the above, you will avoid many of the common mistakes that email marketers make on a regular basis.

Unfortunately however there is nothing you can really do to guarantee that every email you send will get through. All you can do is follow the available advice as closely as possible, and reduce the percentage of emails that get classified as spam.

One thing you can do to is to ask your recipients to add your email address to a safe sender list. This lets the recipients email client know that they have approved of all communications from you.

Are Your Emails Currently Being Classed As Spam?

Any quality email marketing system will allow you to track and record key data from the emails that you send out, if you can see that your bounce rate has increased and that less of your emails are getting opened then it is likely that you are having an issue with spam filters.

Successfully identifying this problem is important if you want to reduce the amount of emails that are getting classed as spam.

Operate Ethically

There are other guidelines around the protecting the personal information of your subscribers, and in operating an ethical email marketing policy. Some of the key factors include:

  • Never share your subscriber database with a third party
  • Enable users to quickly and easily unsubscribe from your email list
  • Don’t email people without first getting their permission

How Can Ezine.ie Help You Avoid Spam Filters

The advanced functionality included within Ezine.ie allows you to test the marketing emails that you create to ensure that they do not trigger the spam filters of either your recipients email clients’ or their ISP’s.

We also have a range of other anti-spam measures embedded within Ezine.ie that  enable our clients to be confident that any email marketing campaign conducted via Ezine.ie is successful.

For more information on how Ezine.ie can support every aspect of your email marketing campaign activity, please contact us in Dublin.