How to keep your newsletter out of spam folders

An email newsletter is a powerful tool for communicating with customers and prospective customers and for promoting your online business. But its effect depends on how many letters actually reach recipients. If messages end up snagged by an automated spam filter, most of your prospective customers will never get the news about your special offers, mega-sales, and promotion campaigns.

Major eNewsletter services like MailChimp and ConstantContact do a fairly good job of keeping your email newsletters out of spam filters but they cannot guarantee that your emails will not be blocked as spam.

Avoid most common spam filter triggers.

Even if you use trustworthy email services or special software, you still need to follow certain rules when creating a newsletter to prevent it from being flagged as spam.

• Avoid using spam trigger words in your content. The most common trigger words and phrases are: free, amazing, winner, promise you, this is not spam, unsubscribe, you registered with a partner, increase sales, and others. The list of such words is quite long and you should try to avoid using them in headlines or text.

• Never write subject headers in all capitals. If your subject is AMAZING OFFER! SIGN UP TODAY, the letter will definitely be flagged as spam.

• Excessive or exaggerated language with exclamation points will be treated as spam.
• Do not design HTML email in Microsoft Word, and export the code to HTML. That code is sloppy, and spam filters hate it. Keep HTML simple and well coded.

• Do not use too many images. The common reason newsletters are flagged by spam filters is “too many images, not enough text.” Spam filters cannot read graphics. That is why spammers use images widely. If you create a newsletter where the text is located inside one large image, it will be flagged.

It is very important to have a legitimate mailing list. Unwanted emails are likely to be reported and your domain will be blacklisted.

Check your newsletter before starting an email campaign.

Make sure your newsletter’s content is appropriate before you start your campaign. Most email services offer their own spam checker tools. MailChimp has its Inbox Inspector Tool. Constant Contact offers the Spam Check Tool. You can also try Lyris’s Content Checker.

Thoroughly check your newsletter content and your email campaigns will work the way you want them to!