Spamming Is Taboo
Unsolicited emails are considered spam and ISPs filter through every email and decide where your email is delivered. Or decides to stop it right in its tracks and block it from delivery. Fortunately there are ways to avoid all this. Starting with building your subscriber list using a permission based solution.
That’s why you absolutely have to start a Permission based email list. In other words, the people on your list signed up to receive emails from you. To do this you use a squeeze page or what most call an opt-in page. It’s a page where people have to insert their email addresses to continue to the next page. Their email address is added to your autoresponders list you configured.
Next, avoid spam trigger words and phrases. You can find a list of 188 spam words to avoid, the site link: activecampaign.com/blog/spam-words
Don’t Buy Bulk email lists online
This next recommendation should not be dismissed. Don’t buy any email list online or Bulk email addresses. Doing so is only asking for trouble.
1–The majority, if not all autoresponders (ESP’s) won’t allow you to add them to your account.
2–If by some chance you do add them to your list you’ll build the worst sender reputation ever along with ruining your domain reputation. After that, any email you send will either be blocked, delivered straight to your spam folder and you’ll receive tons of spam complaints. And worse of all get placed on a blacklist. Believe me, this is bad and almost impossible to repair.
3–Be loaded with bot’s, (short for robot, program scripts that pretend to be addresses and can cause mischief) 4th–Contain old undeliverable email addresses or non-buyers.
Your Reputation
Sender reputation is something to keep an eye on, Your goal is to make your emails more engaging by asking questions for feedback. Get people on your list to reply and click links. Especially early on in your business.
Another reputation to protect is the IP reputation that your autoresponder uses. ESPs share IP addresses with other businesses, so if you ruin the IP reputation, it ruins it for everyone sharing that IP. And your autoresponder account will be shut down.
To avoid this, ask your subscribers to whitelist or what some call safelisting. All that means is they would add your email address to their contact list.
The Can-Spam Act
The can-spam act of 2003 is the primary law regulating commercial email messaging in the USA. The acronym stands for the Controlling the Assault of Non-Soliciting Pornography and Marketing. Can-Spam requires every email to include a working unsubscribe Link. Include their address, Honor opt-out request ASAP, don’t use deceptive or misleading subject lines, sender names or email copy. Don’t conceal your identity or hide that their email is advertising.
If you’re not following these guidelines then you’ll loose trust, get spam complaints and even negative word of mouth.
Other countries have their own regulating commercial email messaging rules. Always do your due diligence so you’re protected and understand what you can and should not do. Like I said repeatedly throughout this post, it’s difficult to clean up a blacklisted IP and domain reputation. It’s not fun when ISP’s block you believing you’re a spammer.
According to Activecampaign, (an ESP) Spam filters check for red flags like:
- The use of certain words
- Links to sketchy websites
- Messages in ALL CAPS
- Colorful and different sized fonts
- Broken HTML code
- Emails without an unsubscribe button
Suspicious Words and Phrases
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- Don’t use a ton of spam keywords into your email
- Don’t use all caps, bright red font, and lots of exclamation points
- If you already have a low delivery rate, if mailing a list of 1000 subscribers and your open rate is 2 or 3 people, this will cause issues every time you send a broadcast. It will only get worse if you keep mailing that list of non-engagers.
- Segment or break the list down into smaller high engaging openers.
- A great best list is a list of clickers, people that click your links in the email and of course buyers/customers.
Bottom line is:
- Don’t buy bulk email lists online. Buying a list of 5,000 email addresses for $20.00 is too good to be true, harmful, loaded with bots, non-buyers and old non-deliverable email addresses. Just don’t do it! You’ll be blacklisted.
- Use permission based emailing
- Ask subscribers to add your email address to their contact list, (whitelist)
- Watch out for spam words and certain spam type phrases
- Try to get people on your list to engage with you, replying, opening and clicking your links.
- Familiarize yourself with ‘The can-spam act of 2003’.
- Protect your sender’s reputation and at the same time protect the ESPs IP reputation.
- Ask people to whitelist/safelist you in their email contacts. Offer a free guide or something worthwhile for doing so.
- It’s Not An Exact Science, meaning ISPs like Gmail is always changing the rules.
- It’s important to have the unsubscribe link very visible in every email you send. Don’t try to hide it with hard to see text or muted colors. An unsubscribe is 1,000 times better than a spam complaint. ISPs don’t count or care about how many people unsubscribe from your list. But they do care and count spam complaints against you.
There you have it, 10 ways to avoid becoming an email spammer and protecting your reputation for more inbox deliverability. It’s not as difficult as it seems. With time, everything gets easier as your domain name ages. Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.
Until next time,
-Ken