Email is still the most important channel of communication for businesses. 74% of surveyed adults say it’s their preferred method of commercial communication, making it a vital business technology.
When your email messages don’t make it through to the intended recipients it can be frustrating. It can also cause you to miss opportunities and potentially lose business.
For example, if a customer contacts you with a problem, and your prompt answer gets blocked by their spam filter, they may think you never responded. Their unhappiness with what they think is a lack of customer support could drive them into the arms of a competitor.
You can also waste marketing dollars crafting wonderful email newsletters and drip campaigns that never get seen because they’re going into a junk mail folder.
How can you ensure your company emails are getting delivered and aren’t being blocked? Here are several tips to help your emails get in front of the intended recipient.
Add Email Authentication to Your Mail Server
Due to the constant onslaught of spam and phishing attacks, organizations and mail providers have beefed up their spam filtering. This can often cause non-authenticated emails to get mistaken for spam.
Email authentication is a group of three protocols that are added to your mail server. They work together to verify that the email being received is from an IP address with the authority to send messages for that domain.
Sometimes when people use a 3rd party service to send emails (Salesforce, Mailchimp, etc.), the receiving mail server can see a mismatch in the IP address and the domain, which causes those emails to be sent to a junk or spam folder.
Email authentication allows you to add all approved IP addresses to your mail server so the receiving mail system would properly recognize the mail as legitimate even if sent through a cloud service.
Keep Links in Emails to just 1 or 2
When you have too many hyperlinks in a message this can trigger as a phishing email or spam. Links to malicious sites are the most prevalent attack used in phishing emails.
96% of phishing attacks happen through email.
Try to keep links in the body of your email to just 1 to 2 links at the most. Be sure to check your signature, sometimes there are several links in a signature that end up triggering a spam filter.
Don’t Use Spam Trigger Words
There are quite a few spam trigger words that if used in your email subject line can get your marketing email automatically blocked.
When crafting your emails, try to avoid these words that tend to be seen as spam or phishing:
- Clearance
- Earn $
- Opportunity
- Cheap
- Cash
- Discount
- Full refund
- Hidden
- Miracle
- Passwords
- Sample
Avoid Using Too Many Exclamation Points
Something else that can get your email sent to a spam folder is the use of excessive exclamation points. This is another tactic often used in phishing emails to get attention.
If you need to use an exclamation point for emphasis, keep it to just one.
Add a Note in Footers to “Add Us to Safe Senders List”
One thing that can help you get your emails from being caught in spam filters is to have those receiving your messages add your email address to their “safe senders” list.
Add a note to the bottom of all your marketing emails, in a footer area. It can be something as simple as, “Please add email@email.com to your Safe Senders list to ensure you receive our messages.”
This can also be a fix if you find out that a client did not receive an email that you sent them. Ask them to add your company domain as a safe sender in their email application.
Use a 3rd Party Mail Service for Marketing Emails
If you are trying to send hundreds of marketing emails at once from your own mail server and it hasn’t been set up to do that, you could get your IP address tagged as a spammer by mail services.
If you have a large list of recipients subscribed to your email newsletter, you may want to consider using an email marketing service, like Constant Contact or Mailchimp to send them. These mail services are specially set up to send thousands of emails out all the time, and your IP address won’t get a reputation as a spammer if you let them handle a large volume of emails for you.
Need Help With Smart Business Email Solutions?
Need to migrate an on-premises email system to the cloud? Are you looking for help setting up your email server? Texas I.T. Pros can assist your Denton or Wise County business with effective email solutions.
Contact us today to learn more! Call 940-239-6500 or reach out online.