Only 79% of emails sent by genuine email marketers reach subscribers’ inboxes — and as an email marketer, that’s a statistic that should concern you.It doesn’t take much for a marketing email to end up in your reader’s junk folder. Just one little mistake can doom your message to spam. And if one of your emails ends up marked as spam, the rest of them are likely to meet the same fate: When your emails go into spam, that damages both email deliverability and your sender reputation.These email marketing best practices to avoid spam will help your emails stay high and dry, making it safely to where they belong — your reader’s inbox.
Only 79% of emails sent by genuine email marketers reach subscribers’ inboxes. As an email marketer, that’s a statistic that should concern you.
What are spam traps?
Spam traps are a type of fraud management tool used by ISP’s (Internet Service Providers). Essentially, spam traps are email addresses that are created specifically to catch spammers. If one of these email addresses ends up on your email list and you send that address an email, you’ve officially hit a spam trap.What happens next? Best case scenario, your sender reputation is hurt to some degree, meaning your email deliverability goes down. But if you hit a major spam trap, your sending domain might be completely blacklisted. Your emails could struggle to get through to all ISP’s.It’s clear that you need to avoid email spam traps at all costs. You want your marketing emails to end up in your reader’s inbox, not their spam folder. Here’s how to avoid email spam filters and folders from the very beginning of your email strategy all the way down to the footer of your marketing email.
Clean your email list regularly
Cleaning your email list on a regular basis will help you avoid email spam traps. Remove any email addresses from your list that bounce back. Try to re-engage dormant subscribers with re-engagement emails, and if that doesn’t work, remove their addresses too.Never buy email addresses. Pure spam traps are email addresses that are treated as “bait.” If you purchase email addresses, you might get some of those addresses and end up on a blacklist. Not to mention, purchasing email addresses is actually illegal under the GDPR and the CAN-SPAM act.In addition to cleaning out your email list regularly, try using a double opt-in to make sure people actually want to hear from you. A double opt-in is sent after somebody initially signs up for your email list (like this example below from GoodPop).Subject line: Confirm your subscription
Making it easy to unsubscribe also helps your sender reputation because people are less likely to mark your email as spam. This message from Essie includes an unsubscribe link in the footer.Subject line: stronger nails in 3 days
Create an email marketing strategy
Don’t send out a bunch of marketing emails just because you can. Every email you create should have a clear strategy and objective behind it. Offer valuable content your audience wants to receive so your messages won’t be marked as spam.In this example, Otherwild curated a gift guide designed for expecting moms. As an apparel store and design studio that sells family- and kid-oriented products, this piece of content was probably relevant to the brand’s email list.Subject line: great gifts for moms-to-be + new babies! ?
Choose a personal sender name
ESP’s pay attention to your sender name — and of course your readers do, too. Your sender name (displayed on the left in your subscribers’ inboxes) can make or break your sender reputation. More than 40% of readers mark emails as spam based on the sender name alone.Don’t use anything that looks spammy for your sender name, like noreply@domain.com. Using your company name and/or a personal name is best. For instance, the sender name “Carlos Watson at OZY” has a personal touch and makes it immediately clear who the message is from.
Use email subject line best practices
People will often mark an email as spam based on the subject line. Avoid this by following simple email subject line best practices. Don’t use all caps. Don’t add any exclamation points. And don’t use spam trigger words, which include phrases like:
- $$$
- Act now
- Certified
- Chance
- Click here
- Exclusive
- Giving away
- Help
- Limited time
- Miracle
- Money back
- Satisfaction guaranteed
- Winner
These words tend to trigger spam filters. Stay away from them to give your email a better chance of hitting the inbox.
Follow email design best practices
The final step to avoid email spam filters is to make sure the body of your email is optimized as much as possible. You’ll want to avoid embedding videos or media since some platforms don’t allow them to play. Don’t add any attachments, either. Since viruses are commonly concealed in attachments, ISP’s will often put emails with attachments into spam.Make sure the text of your marketing email uses correct spelling and grammar and there aren’t any broken or incomplete tags. Big images can increase load time and affect deliverability, so keep any images to a reasonable size.These email marketing best practices to avoid spam sound like a lot to remember. But if you stick to core email design best practices (as demonstrated by Alice + Olivia here), you’ll be golden.Subject line: Spring is in the air ?
Wrap-up: Email marketing best practices to avoid spam
The easiest way to design high-quality marketing emails that will avoid email spam traps is by using the BEE email editor. With this free tool, you don’t need any coding experience to create promotional emails that look great and work well. Use BEE’s email templates to quickly sketch out your message. Then export the email to your email service provider and send it straight to your subscribers’ inboxes!
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