How to keep your email marketing out of the spam folder

Did you know that Gmail rates the IP address you use to send emails? This score is commonly known as a sender score, IP score, or email sender reputation. If a fair amount of your email campaigns have ended up in spam, checking your sender rating is the best place to start your optimization strategy. There are multiple factors that can determine your sender rating: The number of unique email addresses you’re sending to during a campaign The quality of the email recipients you are contacting, which is graded by the sender reputation of said recipients How often your emails are being flagged as ‘spam’ by email recipients The type of content you are including in your emails Want to know the exact rating for your IP address used for email marketing? There are plenty of websites that’ll provide that information for you. Smart Tip: Email marketing services like MailChimp or Constant Contact utilize a system called shared IP. This means that the clients for an email service will be placed under the same IP address for their email marketing. Therefore, the sender reputation of that IP is highly dependent on all the clients utilizing it. If you are looking at using a third-party service for your email marketing, make sure you choose one that clearly understands and states the importance of maintaining a reliable sender rating for their shared IPs.

A DMARC policy tells email receivers like Microsoft (Hotmail, Live, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc) and other ISP’s who have adopted DMARC how to handle email that fails the DMARC check. In layman terms, a DMARC policy influences the way email is handled by the recipient’s server. Here’s how you can generate a DMARC record for your domain. If you are unable to add DMARC record, please check with your domain service provider.

As stated before, the number of emails you send during a campaign plays an important role in determining the amount that ends up in spam. There are many factors to consider when deciding how many contacts should be included in a campaign; but one thing’s for sure, every contact in your mailing list DOES NOT need to be added to every email campaign you create. Email campaigns should be crafted to provide a personal touch and feel that resonates with the reader. To achieve that goal, you need to start creating different specified email lists for different campaigns. By weeding out your general email listing, you’ll find more email recipients that have a better chance of connecting to your business and its products, thus being more willing to read and enjoy your content. If you’re sending emails to every Tom, Dick, and Jane that drops into your email listing without performing any segmentation, that’s a great way to have more emails flagged as spam, which ultimately can put your sender reputation in jeopardy. Smart Tip: Make sure that you are using an email marketing platform that provides metrics after you send out your email campaigns. Tracking your open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates is imperative to understanding which emails are grabbing the attention of email recipients, and which are falling flat. These types of metrics are also great for A-B testing because it can show you what type of format your email recipients prefer to receive your content. Double Smart Tip Alert! When you’re collecting email addresses for your marketing campaigns, make sure you’re gathering emails from people that have agreed to share their email information. Purchasing random email addresses from third-party sellers is a good way for your emails to be sent straight to the spam folder. Gathering emails from those who have willfully provided their info is also good for creating a list of people who actually have an interest in your company. In other words, collecting emails in a legitimate manner is a win-win for both sides. When in doubt, collect emails and then send an opt-in email. This is also a great way to let your users self-select the types of content they want to receive.

You might be thinking that you need to stuff your emails with as much content as possible to get your entire message across. Ironically, that sort of tactic will surely have your emails end up as spam right the get-go. Marketing emails that include too many images or just images with no text are red flags providers look for when searching for spam. To counter this, you need to keep each of your marketing campaigns short and direct. Don’t dilly dally with your messaging. Tell your email recipients what the email pertains to and provide them a clear call-to-action. This tactic is also crucial when crafting your subject lines for your campaigns. Email providers look for subject lines that are misleading based on the content in the email. If your subject line doesn’t match the content, your emails will be filtered as spam faster than you can say “You’ve got mail.” Smart Tip: Did you know there are common words and phrases used in spam emails that email service providers are constantly scanning for? Make sure you are up to date on these common phrases and avoid them like you avoid, well, spam emails. Are you looking to improve your email marketing efforts? With GoZone’s Marketing4WiFi platform, you can begin collecting verified email addresses from your WiFi guests. That way, you’ll be collecting email information from people who have agreed to receive your email content. With GoZone’s easy-to-use Smart Email Builder, simple yet eye-catching email designs can be created with a few clicks of the mouse. Send seasonal specials, promotions, or newsletters to those who interact with your guest WiFi service with our email campaign automated-trigger rules.