There is an art to email delivery that
really is not that difficult to understand when you put your private email
communications in context. Most of us
encounter email delivery problems when we start using email for marketing
purposes and we are sending out a lot of emails to many customers. You may have noticed that very rarely do you
encounter email deliverability problems with your private emails to friends or
even with business emails.
That is because spam filter software has become
very adept at telling the difference between a professional email that could be
spam and private communications. So
naturally that tells us something important about how to go about avoiding
email delivery problems when constructing marketing communications. You just have to work to make sure your
marketing emails do not look like spam and look more like a private email so
they fly right through spam filters and get to your customers.
In addition your marketing emails must act
like private emails. That means if you
have a well developed mailing list of perhaps several thousand of email
addresses or more, do not manage that from your private email service. For a
mailing of that size, it is best to utilize the services of a professional
autoresponder service. The cost is
nominal and could be by the mailing.
They can send out your emails in such a way as to not draw the alarms of
the spam filter software guardians. And they often offer additional services
such as deliverability reports, retransmits of bounced emails and reports of
bad email addresses that can save you a lot of time and make you more efficient
as well.
One of the ways that spam filters often
identify spam is by the level of graphics that is used in the marketing
email. 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 avoid the use of graphics
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.
Have you ever scanned a full spam filter
holding folder? If you have not, you
should because it will tell you a lot about how spammers write. Just by scanning twenty or thirty of these
spam messages, you can get a feel for the techniques used by spammers and you
can avoid those methods in writing your own marketing emails. This falls under the "know thy
enemy" category of doing battle with email delivery problems because it is
the spammer that is the enemy here.
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 the other benefit of writing like this to
your customers is that it is a warm and personal style that will work well in
communicating to customers.
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 stange 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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