| Sometimes, we have legitimate
messages that we send through email. We wait for a reply and none
would come. Once we follow up on the recipient, it would turn out
that our email was deleted by the spam filter, never even reaching
the said recipient’s inbox.
This is such a frustrating reality. But becomes worse when the
message you sent was one of particular importance to your business.
It is at its worst when the concerned messages are from customers
who are seeking support for some products they have bought from
us. This would result in complaints that could possibly bring
our business to ill repute.
Clearly, something must be done to protect our correspondences
against those spam filters.
Making Your Email Messages Spam Filter-Proof
What must be learned is that the spam filters identify certain
words in our email messages to determine whether such an email
is spam or not. The key to protecting your messages against the
anti-spam systems is to avoid using these triggers.
Of course, it goes without saying that we should know what these
triggers are before we could actually avoid them. Let’s take a
look at the known words that trigger those spam filters.
- A message in all caps has a higher likelihood of being trashed
in the junk folder.
- Using the word "free" would also result in a higher
possibility of triggering the spam filters. The word "free"
can be used by itself or in combination with other words, and
the same result can still be expected. Many online marketers
actually go around this restriction by spelling "free"
as "fr.ee" with the dot in between the letters, of
by using another word of similar import altogether. "Bonus"
and "gift," for example, are safe words that could
replace "free."
- Never use excessive exclamation points. If you could, try
to avoid exclamation points and use periods instead.
Spam filters were designed to eliminate sales offers that the
email account owner never agreed to receive. This is why most
of the triggers are somehow related to usual sales pitches. Does
this mean you cannot sell through emails anymore? Most definitely
not!
Ensuring That Your Business Message Gets Through
Most business emails are generated by autoresponder systems.
This is part of a follow-up system that is very essential to the
success of an online enterprise. Hence, it is critical that your
business emails receive their intended recipients.
To ensure this, you have to embed upon your messages an assurance
for the spam filters that they are newsletters that the recipient
has subscribed to. There are many ways to achieve this. You could
include the term "news" or "newsletter" on
the title of your messages. You could also include the period
by which it is distributed, like "weekly" or "monthly."
Also, including the date to the title as well as the body of the
email has been proven to work wonders. If your email is part of
a series, you could also include the issue number.
But the best tactic of all is to make the body of your email
contain substantial content. There is no concrete determination
of what really triggers spam filters to junk incoming emails.
But one thing is certain. If your emails are of high quality and
are very informative, chances are, they’ll reach your recipient’s
inbox. More importantly, it is more or less guaranteed that your
recipient would read your emails.
It has always been said that content is king. It seems that this
adage isn’t only true for websites, but in business emails as
well. With good, quality content, spam complaints won’t have to
be a concern anymore.
Debra Simpson, Magic In Words,
has been in the publishing industry for over 20 years. She works
with small business owners to add "stickiness" to their
website, and create passive income by creating digital, downloadable
products. Visit Magic In Words
and see how you can make your site more "sticky." |
