Email marketing is still alive and well, however it is far more sophisticated today than it was, even 5 years ago. The rise of programs such as Active Campaign, ConvertKit, Mailchimp and the top level Ontraport and InfusionSoft has resulted in many business owners investing significant amounts of money each month to ensure their emails get read by target clients.
If you have invested significant amount of money each month it is understandable you have an expectation your emails will not end up in spam filters. Increasingly there are more and more complaints being made on the FB groups about emails being sent to spam.
What can you do to ensure your emails go into inboxes?
- Never put any Javascript in emails e.g if placing a video in your email use the YouTube link do not embed the video
- Set sender policy framework and DCIM settings, especially if your target clients are using Government, Health, Schools and large corporate emails
- Make sure your spelling is excellent – Google doesn’t like bad spelling!
- Use clean lists – check for the amount of soft and hard bounces
- Use double opt-in – Gmail can tell if your email subscriber opted in via double or single methods and are more likely to deliver to those who are more qualified as leads which is what double opt-in indicates
- Ask your list members to white list your email or add you to their contacts list
- Keep emails short and the content relevant and interesting – the more emails are opened the better
- Be reliable about when you send emails e.g day and time so they are expected. People are creatures of habit that can be trained.
- Personalising the email using Dear {name} is often noted by email providers as providing better open rates
- Emails landing in the promotions tab of Gmail have been found to obtain better open rates. Gmail seems to like the fact they are seen as legitimate promotions.
Mailing Program suppliers do not have a great deal of influence over the ability of your emails to not end up in spam. Sadly there is no magical setting they can tweak to ensure your email will land in the inbox not spam. The email readers (Gmail, Microsoft Outlook etc) are getting more and more strict on spam categorisation. This has been driven by users who are very fast to complain about the amount of spam they get plus the move to the reader determining what they receive rather than the sender.
"The best way to ensure your emails are not going into spam is to make the content so compelling that your email readers can't wait to get them and open them every time."
Acknowledgements: Benelds International Pty Ltd for the terrific tips and tricks to email marketing using Active Campaign at their Sydney seminar recently. At Dynamic Online Service we use and recommend Active Campaign and Convert Kit for our clients.
