5 Tips on How to Keep Your Emails Out of Spam Part 1
When it comes to cold email outreach (direct email marketing), it’s important to consider everything that can potentially damage your campaign, reducing your chances of getting in contact and eventually on the phone with your target audience and desired prospects.
This blog post will outline five (5) professional cold outreach techniques you can (and should) implement into your SDR team’s pre-sales processes while messaging prospects via direct email marketing.
Email deliverability is not an exact science, which can be frustrating, even for seasoned email marketing specialists. It’s not too hard to end up in the email spam folder for any number of reasons, from your email list health to your authentication status, but there are a few tried-and-true tricks that can help you land back in the inbox in no time.
How spam filters work
Spammers have been the bane of our lives since email first came out. So, as much as we dislike the fact that our messages are going to spam, we have also to take a second to appreciate why the spam filter exists and the value it brings.
In the battle against spammers, there are a good handful of entities involved:
- Internet Service Providers: They develop rules to screen out suspicious activity on the network. Their security measures and protocols apply to spammers as well. For example, ISPs collect DNS-based Blacklists, by which they automatically check senders. If the system finds the IP in the Blacklist, it does not allow incoming messages from this address.
- Email Service Providers: The most popular of these are Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail. Depending on the reliability of the service, the level of its spam protection will differ. Generally, sophisticated services have multiple spam filters with different algorithms. The most well-known example is a spam trigger words filter, allowing email messages containing forbidden phrases or symbols.
- Anti-spam laws: Violation of the norms leads to criminal liability and penalties. The laws apply to personal information theft, phishing activities, user data collection without permission, etc. One example, the CAN-SPAM Act, protects Americans from spam.
Parties from all over the globe come together in their ways (and quite often unite on the same or very similar laws and regulations) to combat spammers and scammers for better internet. This kind of cooperation leads to a more safe user experience. However, spam filters and traps sometimes catch innocent email marketers who want to communicate with their potential customers and clients.
How to avoid spam and keep the deliverability of your messages high and in prospect inboxes
Keeping high deliverability is tough! However, with the information below, you’ll be able to take what you learn and apply it directly to your current process and see instant results and optimization.
Review the following points to perform at a higher level and set more sales appointments using cold email outreach. We’ve identified five (5) core categories you need to focus on:
- Technical basics
- Subscriber base
- Text content
- Email design
- Regulations
These categories have six (6) subcategories to support them. In total, we’ll go over thirty (30) tips on keeping your email messages out of your prospects’ spam and in their inboxes. However, this will be broken down into a five (5) part series of blog posts. Today, we’re going to start with the first five (5) critical aspects of staying out of spam.
Technical basics
Sender’s name
Your email address (the sender’s) must be recognizable when sending someone an email. And if this is a nurturing campaign, it should include a brand name. Messages from an unknown address with a common name are more likely to go to spam. When you send emails, don’t use an address with numbers or ones that include “no-reply” before the domain name. It’s best to assign a brand name to the address and specify the sender’s name. Emails that are sent without an appropriate address receive penalties.
DNL blacklist
Blacklists are formed from IP addresses and domains detected in spamming. When a sender gets a bad reputation, their IP is banned, and their messages aren’t sent to recipients. You can check whether or not your IP has been blacklisted using various tools.
Email service provider
The ESP you choose will largely determine your success in getting emails delivered. Highly-trusted ESPs (recipient) often block messages from untested, unknown, or disreputable ESPs (sender). If your ESP is recognized as reliable and protected, your emails are more likely to get delivered. The most popular ESPs, mentioned above are also some of the most reputable ones.
Certification
To increase recipient trust in your emails, you can buy S/MIME certificates for your single email address or company address. After adding the certificate to your email software, your emails will be encrypted and digitally signed, optimizing results because a reputable organization will verify your address. For example, SSL.com provides Personal Basic Certificates for $20 a year.
Spam test
Before sending an email, you should check the “spamminess.” You can test it with a particular service that simulates spam filter algorithms and tests emails according to specific criteria. One of these services is ISNOTSPAM.com. Before sending an email, you can see an online report that gives you the probability that your message will pass through the recipient’s ESP spam filters.
To sum up and conclude
When it comes to direct email marketing, staying out of spam is crucial; even the most successful companies face the threat of spam filtering. As a professional trying to achieve results, you need to stay up to date on trends, tips, and tricks, as well as tools for high-level direct outreach using cold email campaigns. And let’s not forget that your subscribers can mark your messages as spam even after they receive them.
This blog post was only the first of a five (5) part series the team here at SalesAR decided to write to help people like you stay on top and win more business. By reviewing the information above and following our instructions, you’ll be ahead of your competition and on the path to more warm leads, sales appointments, and more significant revenue.
