Email, a key marketing strategy, doesn’t always bear the fruits the business desires. It could be because the email blast your business is sending out is not being seen; it is directly landing in the spam folders.
How do you stop it? The few things you can do are mentioned below in the infographic that will prepare you with email best practices to avoid spam.
Clean Email List
Clearing out the email addresses are not valid and unengaged is essential. Only then will the email list be clean; it will hit the right inboxes, drive conversions, and nurture leads. Here are three benefits of having an email list with interested recipients.
1. Cost saving
There is no point in spending money on individuals who will never convert. Therefore, for subscribers who have inactive email addresses or those who express no interest, it is better to drop them off your email list and save money.
2. Better email deliverability
All marketers wish for their email campaigns to have a high deliverability rate, which is possible with an email list of engaged, interested, reliable, and reachable subscribers opening your emails. Pushing the deliverability and engagement rate of email campaigns higher than usual.
3. Increased engagement
The clean email list clearly highlights the importance of engaged subscribers impacting the email metrics performance. As per the research done by Mailchimp, the email list with 0-5%, 6-10%, and 11-15% inactive subscribers have an average open rate of 24.79%, 20.54%, and 15.22%, respectively.
Subject Lines
Subject lines are essential to stay away from spam folders as they are first thing recipients check out when they receive an email. Your subject line shouldn’t be in all caps or have too many exclamation marks or spammy words (100% More, 100% Free, 100% Satisfied, etc.).
To write the best subject lines, here are a few tips so that your email can get past the 69% of recipients who are not impressed with a poorly written subject line.
1. Short and Simple Subject Line
The subject line should be direct, simple, short, and easy for the recipients to read. When you share an email with a complicated subject line, recipient’s eyes will gloss over the words; and then it can end up in the spam folder.
2. Use Personalization
Personalizing your email subject line with the clientele’s first name or with location-based offers strikes a chord with your target audience. You can also utilize tools to heighten the personalization of the subject lines, as personalization is a proven way to make the target audience more likely to open your email.
3. Add Numbers
The human brain is naturally drawn towards numbers; that’s why try adding numbers to your email subject line. Numbers are more visually appealing, promising the audience an easy and quick read.
Unsubscription Option
The unsubscribe link of an email campaign is usually at the end of the email. It is crucial to have unsubscribe option as it required by the spam laws across the world. It also helps in protecting your email deliverability rate. Few more benefits of providing unsubscription option is mentioned below.
1. Reach the inbox, not the spam
When recipients find an email without an unsubscribe button, they are most likely going to flag the email, sending it to the spam folder. Spiking the spam rates of a particular email account, and increasing the chances of it terminated and suspended.
2. Gaining feedback
Take the opportunity of sending confirmation email for unsubscription, to collect feedback. Feedback are helpful as it helps you have a better understanding about whether your newsletter weren’t helpful or email your email communication was way too often, or it was entirely something else, which made the recipients unsubscribe your emails.
Unsubscription rate is a good parameter to learn about your email program health. Unsubscription rate below <0.2% is excellent, <0.5% is good and >1% poor unsubscription rate.
3. Putting an end to Customer Frustration
Many a time’s customers consent for a newsletter they weren’t really that interested in, hoping when they receive the start receiving the newsletters they will unsubscribe it. Now imagine how frustrating it is for a customer to receive a newsletter without unsubscribe button, not being able to follow the plan they already had in mind. Customer sometimes look forward to unsubscribing so make sure your email provide that option.
4. Create Segmented Email List
When you use tags in the email marketing platform to segregate a list of subscribers into different groups, it is called email segmentation. It has several benefits; for instance, the un-segmented email campaigns have a higher unsubscription and bounce rate, which is reduced by 9.37% and 4.65%, respectively, with segmented email lists. On the same grounds, there is a significantly reduced abuse report (3.90%) and bounce rate (4.65%).
These are some of the very promising benefits of email segmentation, but the benefits of email segmentation don’t end here. Below, we have listed a few more benefits.
When you want to maximize the returns of your email campaign investment, a segmented email list performs better in the areas of open rates and clicks.
- Open rates: When you have segmented the email list, the personalization factor of the email goes up, hence the likeliness of the email being opened by the target audience. The average open rate goes up by 31% and the unique open rate by 10.64%.
- Click: When the open rate increases, the clicks on the email also increase. With email tracking technologies, you can accurately determine how many times the writer has interacted with the email and proceeded to further actions. Statistics suggest that segmented email list clicks go up 95%.
5. High- Quality Content
High-quality email content ensures that email doesn’t get marked as spam. The email service provider and the internet service provider analyze the content of the email.
Apart from the email being scrutinized by the service providers, the recipients of the email, if they find the content misleading, poor quality, and irrelevant, they can flag the email.
Even with a load of sophisticated email marketing tactics, if the content is not created with clarity, consciousness, and value proposition, it doesn’t add any to the target audience’s requirements. If the email content is not personalized, the unsubscription rate can be 52% percent, whereas if it is personalized, it can have a click-through rate of 27% and a heightened engagement rate of 74%.
Email Frequency
The frequency at which the emails are sent can make or break the success of your campaigns. The rate at which you intend to send emails must be right, as 74% of people are usually overwhelmed by email overload.
When brands send out emails indiscriminately without relevance, recipient engagement, and timing. It leads to a few significant challenges, as mentioned below.
- High Spam Risk: 44% of people spend their time clearing junk email at work, and these stats clearly highlight the fact that any business that has sent too many similar emails too many times will get flagged.
- Low Engagement: When too many emails are sent continuously, they get ignored and deleted. The click-through rates and the open rates are heavily affected.
- Negative brand perception: When businesses drop into your client’s inboxes way too frequently, their business reputation ends up taking a bad hit. Most of their clients start considering their business unworthy and intrusive.
Focus on the Address from which You Send Email
94% of the clients become loyal to a brand when they are provided full transparency, and it also determines whether their email will be opened or not. This makes it vital for a business to choose a consistent “from” name and email address.
61% of people like receiving promotional emails all week, and 38% don’t mind receiving promotional emails even more frequently, which is why it makes sense to choose a title that is recognizable by your subscribers. It is your company name or the product or service they have chosen to subscribe to.
Apart from these reasons, the “From,” “To,” and “Reply-To” have to be accurate for compliance guidance for business as per the “CAN-SPAM”/ “GDPR Act.
Let Go Attachments
Actual spam emails have harmful attachments, which is why businesses sending emails with attachments can trigger spam filters. The service providers and spam filters pick up on these emails as 1.2% of the emails sent are malicious, and 1 out of 4,200 always end up in a phishing scam.
In some cases, the spam filters are even designed to remove emails with attachments, and in some cases, the spam filters get triggered depending on the size of the email.
To avoid getting picked up by the spam filter, include all the necessary information in the body of the email, as Google itself blocks 100 million phishing emails every day. If you want to add additional material, then use links rather than attachments.
Follow these email best practices to avoid spam folder once and for all.
Conclusion
Even after the increasing popularity of chat apps and social media, email marketing has managed to stay the cornerstone of digital marketing. It is estimated that by 2026, the number of emails sent and received will hit 392.5 billion daily emails. To ensure your email doesn’t get lost in this staggering back-and-forth email flow and eventually gets flagged, follow the email best practices to avoid spam.
