Six easy steps to bounce-proof your email campaign
With spammers making life increasingly difficult
for serious marketers, it takes great effort to
keep your email newsletter from getting blocked,
filtered or blacklisted. To increase deliverability,
each aspect of your email should be thoroughly
checked, so that it passes-through even the strictest
of spam checkers.
The major elements that need to be attended
to are:
- Content
- HTML coding
- Template
- IP address and domain name
- Browser/mailbox compatibility
- CAN SPAM compliance
1. Content
Your content should be able to provide requisite
information and at the same time avoid major spam
words. If you search for spam words on the net,
you’ll find that the list in un-ending.
This makes the task of writing effective content
a bit tricky, but not impossible. The easy way
out is to tone down your content.
Here’s what you can do:
- Moderate the use of hard-selling words like
– free, sale, offer, powerful, etc.
- Do not use exclamation marks
- Do not capitalize excessively
- Do not write any adult-oriented content
- Run your content through any of the free
spam content checkers available on the net
- Replace sensitive words with synonyms or
try different techniques to change the word
(e.g., sale = s@le)
- Finally, if you must, put sensitive words
in image format instead of text as images can’t
be read by spam checkers
2. HTML coding
Broken code is a major spam indicator. All spam
filter programs look for it. The problem could
be as small as forgetting a closing symbol, such
as ">," or using an outdated tag,
such as <tbody>. Spam filters also spam
messages with JavaScript, VBScripts, CSS, etc.,
so it is advisable to use simple HTML format.
There are free HTML code validators available
online – remove all images and variable
content, and run your code through an HTML validator
to correct errors.
3. Template
An effective design template can boost deliverability
and response rates of an email newsletter or campaign.
Your message should be crafted for the inbox of
the recipient. The reader decides to open or delete
the message based on the elements he sees in the
preview pane, which is roughly about 5 inches
wide and 3 inches deep. The most important features
of your newsletter should come within this space.
Do not use too many images in the template. Give
all links in text format and provide descriptive
alt tags for all images.
4. IP address and domain name
If people had reported your earlier email as
spam, then your IP address or domain name may
get blacklisted. Check with major spam filters
for this and submit your request for getting your
IP address/domain name re-activated. Alternatively,
use different IPs or domain names for each mass
mailing exercise. Many ISPs provide dynamic IPs
for this purpose.
5. Browser/mailbox compatibility
Easy way to test if your message is getting
spammed or appearing correctly is to send it
to yourself on various e-mail clients, such
as Yahoo, AOL, Gmail, and Hotmail. These email
service providers have extensive spam filters
for which reports are collected from all over
the world. You can also see how will it look
in the mailbox of a recipient. Also view your
message in different browsers such as, Internet
Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator,
Opera, etc., and platforms such as PC, Macintosh,
Blackberry, PDA, etc. After correcting all the
problems identified, run through this diagnostic
process again to double check.
6. CAN SPAM compliance
Every e-mail message, whether newsletters, offers,
confirmations, or bulletins, must have these elements:
- Link to the web version
- Working opt-out link
- Company name and physical address
- Recipient's e-mail address
- Link to preference-update page
- Working "contact us" link or phone
number
Make it easier for your recipient and put all
of these together at the bottom of your mail message.
Once, your email campaign is bounce-proofed,
it is sure to generate more results. Keep a track
of response rates through email campaign trackers,
so that you will know the exact improvement.
