emails are received by many different email clients (for example microsoft outlook,
apple mail, BlackBerry mail or gmail), each with their own settings and business rules about what is and is not spam. the goal of any email is to reach the desired
person. Spam filers are not very friendly to email marketing campaigns. Spam
filters are on every email client and are there to prevent spam mail cluttering the
inbox. You need to understand how spam filers work and then avoid some common
mistakes to ensure that your email reaches your recipients.
abide by the following rules:
• use HtmL, no cSS, only tables. If you are not a technical person, don’t worry:
all you need to know is that HtmL is the term used for the code that developers
use to build websites and email templates. there are good and bad ways to
write code. It’s important to stick to the rules of the game; otherwise, search
engines, web browsers and email clients will not like your emails very much.
For those who know a little HtmL, try to code your newsletter in neat, clean
W3c-compliant HtmL code (www.w3.org) using inline styles. Writing code in
microsoft Word and then exporting the code to HtmL is not professional and
spam filters do not like it as microsoft Word carries special characters across.
• Images. avoid using too many images and not enough HtmL; spam filters
cannot read images and become suspicious of the email’s contents. add “alt”
tags to all images and make sure that they are saved for the web (more on
this in chapter 6). avoid using the .png image format. create a plain-text
version of your email as well (most email applications create this for you),
just in case someone cannot download your images – at least they can still
read your email content and links.
• caPItaLS. do not use capital letters, especially in the subject line. this is
considered the online equivalent of shouting.
• test. do not use the word “test” in the subject line, especially when sending
a test email to multiple colleagues or to the client. make sure that your
system administrator also knows that you are sending test emails so that
they can whitelist your email service provider’s (eSP’s) server (so that your
email is not presumed to be spam and blocked). most eSPs should be able to
explain how to whitelist their servers.