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Do your emails smell a little spammy?

By March 13, 2012No Comments

I’ll be honest and admit that I’m not the biggest fan of email marketing. Wait a second and hear me out. I’ve talked to a few people and for a good number of people email in-boxes are equivalent to black holes. One business owner told me she only checks her email twice a week and then only looks for personal email. This scenario has got to be one of the top ten worst nightmares for anyone who engages in the email marketing campaign process.

But then there are those who have well segmented lists and their products are viewed as extremely valuable. These marketers get high open rates and lots of click-throughs that result in sales.

I’ve noticed however, over the past few years that emails have changed. Emails with flashing bells and whistles; graphic heavy emails are showing up less and less in my inbox. That is because spam filter software has become very adept at telling the difference between a professional email that could be spam and personal communications like the ones my business owner friend only likes to read.

That’s good information to know. From that we learn how to avoid email delivery problems when constructing our email campaigns. We just have to work to make sure marketing emails do not look like spam and look more like a private email so they fly right through spam filters and get to customers.

In addition your marketing emails must act like private emails. Recent trends I’ve noticed are email subjects written in all lower case letters which may be making it easier to pass through spam filters and emails with no graphics whatsoever.

Spam filters look at the number or level of graphics in an email to determine if its spam or not. So many people are foregoing the graphics altogether. While very attractive emails do send a message of professionalism to the customer, they don’t send that message if they end up at the bottom of a spam quarantine folder. So just avoid the use of them altogether. Just say what you have to say to your customer and then draw them to your web site with a link where they can see your professional graphics.

Take a look at what’s in your spam folder. Then vow not to create anything that looks like or sounds like the emails taking up resident in your spam folder. Notice how spammers write and remove any similar language from your emails.

When writing an email that will go out to your customers or prospective customers, think of that customer as one person whom you are writing to as a friend. Be informal and avoid a lot of marketing “hype” and hyperbole. Spam filters are good at “listening” for the language of spam artists so if you write like a person writing to a person, it is very likely your email will go right on through because it will not be flagged as marketing at all. And honestly, most customers appreciate and respond favorably to emails written in this tone.

Make a hobby of keeping up with how spam emailers work and how their messages change as they learn to get around spam filters. The spam filter businesses will be changing with them so be aware of any new trends in this strange part of cyberspace communication so you can alter how you create your marketing emails so you make sure your communications with your customers never look like spam.

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