Holiday Marketing Campaigns: Avoid Email Spam Filters

Pumpkin Spice is in the air, which can only mean two things: it’s fall and the holidays are right around the corner. Every business should be jumping on the holiday train early to plan and prioritize deals, discounts, and promotions. While you can blast your deals on social media, there is another way to do it: through email marketing. The biggest hurdle is avoiding email spam filters, so your customers actually see your promotions. Today, Helix House is going to tell you how to do just that.

What are Email Spam Filters?

A spam filter is something that catches spam before it hits your inbox. It scans every incoming email for key phrases, malicious links and content, and unknown attachments. You can also set how much your spam filter blocks in most email services. Essentially, it’s designed to detect your identity and your computer from viruses and phishing. As a business owner, they’re both wonderful and horrible at the same time. They protect you, but they also can potentially block your marketing email campaigns. This skews your data and open rates! For example, say you send out 100 emails and 100 of them get delivered. That’s great, a 100% delivery rate! Granted, don’t get your hopes up. It’s unlikely 100 people will actually open your email. About 25 of them will, which gives you an open rate of 25% (this is actually really good!). However, imagine if 75 of those emails are marked as spam, meaning only about 25 of your emails are actually getting delivered into the recipient’s inbox. That means it drastically reduces your visibility and your open rate — maybe only 1 person opens the email, but your data says 100 were delivered. So instead of a 25% open rate, you’re now facing a 1% open rate. See the difference?

What Normally Flags an Email as Spam?

A spam filter scans for common phrases, links, and attachments that normally indicate a spam message or a malicious message. You could have the best intent in the world, but if your email includes any of those, you could easily end up in the spam folder. Let’s first look at the obvious: what spam filters look out for.

Subject Lines That Get Flagged as Spam

These are the first things and easiest things to eliminate. Take them out of your vocabulary completely — everyone knows what spam looks like and if you want a successful email marketing campaign, avoid these and various forms of these in your subject: Subjects to avoid Examples:

• Double your income
• Earn $
• Save $
• Online degree
• Recent order update
• Notice for
• You’re on our list

Instead, craft strong headlines for subjects. Instead of saying “Save $$$ During Our Biggest Holiday Sale EVER” say “Get 40-70% STOREWIDE This Weekend Only!”

Avoid Misleading Content

Never mislead. Always be truthful and straight to the point in your promotional content. If you say it’s for a storewide sale, make the content about the sale. It’s really as easy as that. We recommended making the content engaging and fun by adding images. Avoid blocks of words and make sure it’s formatted correctly. An email that sends funky, or has lines of code in it, will likely be flagged as spam or malicious content. We also recommend avoiding copying and pasting links in emails — embed them or put them into a button. This looks a lot less fishy to email spam filters.

Never Send Attachments

If you’re sending emails with attachments to people you don’t know, just stop. Attachments not only mean it takes longer to download the email, but they also often lead the email directly to a bounce or the spam folder. Instead, send subscribers to a landing page with that content by including a link or call-to-action button in the email.

Is the “Promotions” Tab in Gmail a Spam Folder?

Via Giphy http://gph.is/1i8NRBf

Not all of your content will end up in the recipient’s primary inbox. If they use Gmail, it could end up in their promotions folder instead. Is that a bad thing? No! The promotions tab is not a spam folder. In fact, if your email is ending up there, then it means you’re doing it right! It’s being flagged as a business promotion and sorted automatically to where people expect to see those emails, instead of mixed in with their work and personal messages. It is definitely not a bad thing, but it’s also not always the most visible. If you’re worried about this, then you can learn how to avoid the promotions tab here. Just be warned, you could be marked as spam by the recipient! Or, if you want it done right but don’t have the time to do it yourself, call us at Helix House. Our team of copywriters know how to write kick-butt emails that boost interest, sales, and avoid the spam folder entirely. Reach out today and see the difference Helix House can make for you.