Reasons your Bulk Email will get flagged as SPAM

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Reasons you will get flagged as SPAM:

1.   You Didn’t Include Your Physical Address

Did you know that it is actually against the CAN-SPAM Act to neglect including your valid, physical address?Your emails must include either your current street address, a post office box that has been registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.

No matter how valuable you think your email campaigns are, you still need to give your subscribers a potential out. If you don’t, you could get spam complaints (at best), or slapped with thousands of dollars in fines.At the bottom of your emails, include an “unsubscribe” link, or a similar opt-out feature.Also, when someone asks to be removed, you need to honor that request promptly. Specifically, you must process that request within 10 business days.


3.   Your Subject Line is Misleading

Every person you send an email too has the power to click the “spam” button on your messages even if it is a perfectly legit email message. Recent studies have indicated that users are 50% more likely to click the “spam” button if they feel they were tricked or rushed into ready an email because of a bad subject line.The best practice for constructing an email would make your English teachers sense of order twitch.

  1. Write and proof read the body of the message first.
  2. Once the body is done, create the subject based on what you really wrote. This ensures your subject probably introduces the emails content.
  3. Address the people the message is TO and CC to. Saving this to the end has two benefits (1) you can’t accidently send the message before it’s done. (2) it provides you time to consider who the message is for and who needs to be on the CC and not the target TO line.

4.   Your Signature was Confused as Part of the Message Body

If you signature and message body boundary is vague spam filters won’t properly analyze the two types of content. Prior to your signature provide a blank line, followed by a line with two dashes “--‘’ and another blank line. This format is recognized by mail processing code and mail clients as an indication that what follows is a signature.

Example
Last sentence of email 

-- 

Joe Doe
Accounting Manager…..
Rest of signature


5.   You Have Used Spam Trigger Words

Some spam filters are triggered by certain words in the subject line or the body of the email. To avoid this Write Content that Isn't Full of Spam Words.

This suggestion may seem fairly obvious. However, you'd be surprised how many emails are sent daily and then end up in the spam or junk folder because they were loaded down with words like "free" or "credit." There are many free online tools that will scan your email content and give you a score or a color-coded rating regarding the likelihood that you will be flagged as spam. While these tools are imperfect, they can give you a red flag if you are clearly in the danger zone.

The basic rule of thumb is to understand the words and types of language that most email service provider spam filters will consider likely junk mail. Then simply write in a manner that doesn't incorporate those words or style. It may mean that you need to think a little harder while writing your copy, but that effort will be worth it when you hit the inbox. After all, it doesn't matter how persuasive the word "free" would be with your recipients if they never actually see the email.

Some spam trigger words include:

  • amazing
  • cancel at any time
  • check or money order
  • click here
  • congratulations 
  • dear friend
  • for only ($)
  • free or toll free
  • great offer
  • guarantee
  • increase sales
  • order now 
  • promise you
  • risk free
  • special promotion
  • this is not spam
  • winner


6.   Manage Your Subject Line

Subject line will be a huge determinant to your email's ability to get into the inbox. It’s the first thirty-five to fifty characters of an email subject line that users see. The reality is that you should not write an email subject line that is significantly longer than that because the longer your email subject line is, the more likely it would be flagged as spam.

Remember these three primary rules:
  1. Shorter is better! (But not fewer than 5 or 6 words).
  2. Don't rely on words included in the "spam words" list.
  3. Avoid using all caps or special characters in your email subjects. This may result in having you flagged as spam. 

7.  Avoid the Use of Red Fonts and Large Headline Size Fonts

Red fonts and huge headline size fonts have also been shown to cause spam filter issues, though not as frequently as many of the other. As a general rule, it's just a better idea to avoid using red fonts (pick an off-red color), huge headline fonts of more than sixteen pixels or a combination of both. There are plenty of design options that still give you great flexibility without using those font sizes and colors.


8.   Get Users to Whitelist You

Regardless of whether you are using a third party email platform or an in-house solution, your derivability to the inbox is assured for every subscriber who actively adds you to their address book or contact list. It's up to you to encourage users to take that action. The most effective way to accomplish this will be to ask them to add you to their contact or address book in the welcome email that they receive when they sign up for your newsletter or email list. It also doesn't hurt to remind them to do that in the body of every email that you send. After all, it may take several emails before you've proven yourself to be "inbox-worthy" content that your new subscribers really want to receive.

There's only so much that you can do to encourage recipients to add you to an address or contact book, but every subscriber whom you can convince to do so is one more email that you are assured will get directly to the inbox.

You've most likely seen the type of copy that is used to encourage users to add an email to an address book or contact list. In case you haven't, here's a good example of how it's typically phrased. "Take a quick moment to add the email address (insert the email address that you send from) to your address book or contact list. That way, you'll always be sure that you aren't missing important information or offers from us!"

Every effort that you can make to have users individually white list you will pay off in improved sender reputation.

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