There is a lot of noise out there in today’s consumer's inbox. Your good reputation as a sender is critical to your e-mails actually making it into the inbox. The content of your e-mails is important too, of course, but marketers need to start paying attention to how their e-mails are being delivered as well.
Here are some steps to take to ensure that your e-mails are being delivered to your recipients and not landing in a spam folder:
Become a trusted sender: When your subscribers opt-in to receive your communications, make sure that you are clear about what he should expect. For instance, how many e-mails will he receive? When will he be receiving them? What sort of e-mails do you send? Most importantly, follow through with your promises.
Create great e-mail content: If you are sending out e-mails with bad content to your subscribers, you risk having them unsubscribe and not engage with your company. Plus, recipients always have the power to mark your e-mails as spam.
Keep a clean database: Keep a keen eye on your data. Verify e-mail addresses before you send your e-mails. Make sure to regularly scrub your database to remove inactive, incorrect, and duplicate e-mail addresses. You can do this yourself with your operations team, or you can hire a third-party data cleansing service.
Choose a reputable e-mail marketing solution: There are a lot of options out there for e-mail marketing or marketing automation solutions. Make sure you choose a vendor that can handle bounce codes, feedback loops, and connection optimization.
Think about complaint rates: Your e-mail marketing platform will warn you if complaints are being made against your company. Take these very seriously. A suggestion is to create an e-mail alias to handle spam complaints. Make sure you register this e-mail address with anti-spam groups to show that you are responsible and have made yourself available to address any complaints.
Watch your HTML code: Make sure your HTML code does not have any errors. E-mails that have coding errors can quickly cause your e-mail to be sent directly to spam folders.
Have an obvious unsubscribe option: Of course, you never want your subscribers to unsubscribe from your communications, but you must include unsubscribe information in your e-mail anyway. Use a one-step unsubscribe process that is easy to find and easy to follow.
