In the game of email marketing, if your emails are not being delivered then you are wasting your time and your money. So, let’s take a look at what spam filters are and what you can do to avoid them and get your emails to your subscriber’s inbox.

What are spam filters?

In order to protect their users, email providers such as Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo Mail use spam filters to help ensure these messages don’t clutter users’ inboxes or harm them.

These spam filters act as a shield, analysing incoming emails and allowing the good ones to reach the inbox while filtering the bad ones into the spam folder (or blocking them completely).

Previously these email providers would only analyse your email content to look for spammy content and decide whether to block your email or not. Nowadays, there is more involved when it comes to an email getting blocked by a spam filter. Email providers actually look at their user engagement and previous interactions with your past campaigns and use this information to determine whether your latest campaign makes it to the inbox or not.

What you want your customers to do with your emails:

• Open your emails – when readers frequently open your emails email providers see this as a good sign and will improve your reputation.
• Reply to your emails – when readers reply to your email, email providers consider this a good signal and improve your reputation.
• Mark your email as not junk – when customers move your email out of the junk folder, this is considered a very strong, positive signal that your campaigns are relevant and worthy of making the inbox.
• Move your email to other folders – If your recipients move your emails into various folders in their inbox, the email providers take this as a sign they care about your emails and are more likely to continue delivering them to their inbox.
• Add to address book – If your recipients add your email address to their address book, the email providers see this as a good signal and will keep delivering your emails to the recipient

What you don’t want your customers to do with your emails:

• Move your email to their junk folder – when customer’s move your email to their junk folder this is seen as a negative sign with email providers and they are less likely to deliver your emails in the future. 
• Deletes your email without open – when a customer deletes your email without opening it, the email provider will see this as a negative signal.

How to avoid spam filters

1. Only email people who have given you permission to do so – you don’t want to waste your time or money purchasing email lists, this is only going to damage your sending reputation as well as your company’s reputation. Rather build your email list organically through people signing up to receive your emails. There are a number of ways that you can grow your email list. By offering an amazing incentive (such as great content, exclusive discounts, etc) and having prominent subscribe opportunities that make it easy to join your list, you can build a high-quality email list that ensures your email campaigns get delivered to everyone.

2. Use a known from name – one of the first things that a subscriber sees is your from name and will play a huge part in whether your recipient opens your email or not. The key to success here is using a from name that your recipients are going to recognise. For example, if we sent our TouchBasePro newsletter from Victoria Simpson (that’s me by the way) instead of from TouchBasePro, not all our clients are going to know who the email is from and are less likely to open it.

3. Use a real reply-to address – we mentioned earlier that you want your recipients to reply to your emails. Email providers know that people are not going to reply to junk and spam emails so they see it as a good sign if users are replying to emails. Avoid using a noreply@companyname.com email address and rather use an email address that your customers can reply to. Aside from this being a way to avoid the spam filter it also gives your customers the opportunity to open up a conversation with you.

4. Send targeted campaigns – instead of going for a spray and pray approach (which really doesn’t work), send targeted emails to segmented groups of your database. By sending tailored and segmented emails, your recipients are more likely to open and engage with your emails which will ultimately help in improving your reputation with email providers.
   
   
5. Implement DMARC – get the gold standard of email protection through Sendmarc. Through Sendmarc we are able to implement DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) on your domain which helps in the authentication of your email domain. To find out more about Sendmarc and your email protection, get in touch with us. 

When it comes to your email marketing, avoiding spam filters is not always at the top of your mind, however, it plays such a crucial role in ensuring the success of your marketing. Keep these tips in mind when creating your next email campaign and contact us for any assistance with your email marketing. Happy sending!