How to Keep Your Legitimate Direct Mail From Getting Snatched Up by Spam Filters
You spend hours working on a piece of direct e-mail, sweating over the tiniest details, making sure it tells your customer or prospect exactly what they need to know in exactly the right way. When you're finished your tenth or eleventh draft, you click the send button, sit back, and wait for business to start rolling in.
But nothing happens.
Studies show that more than fifteen-percent of permission-based e-mails don't make it through the spam filters of major e-mail account providers like Yahoo!, Google, and Hotmail. And for query e-mails (non-permission-based e-mails) the rate is much, much higher. People just aren't receiving these messages!
Composing your e-mails doesn't end when you've perfected the body copy for sales effectiveness. You also have to take into consideration how your copy will be "read" by spam filters. Many filters use a points-based system to determine whether a piece of email is legitimate, awarding points for certain words and phrases and domain names, and even the colors you use in your design. The higher you score, the less likely it is that your e-mail will be delivered.
To avoid having your hard work intercepted and "absorbed" by spam filters, consider these important rules when editing the text of your e-mail.
Rule #1: Be Careful With Your Vocabulary
Spam filtering programs use an entire dictionary of common words and phrases that pop-up consistently in spam e-mails. Avoid words like "free," "prize," "offer," the names of major pharmaceuticals, the names of celebrities, etc.
Rule #2: Be Professional
Writing in all-caps, increasing font-size, using lots of punctuation (such as multiple exclamation points) and highlighting words in rainbow colors are all tell-tale sign for spam-filters that your e-mail is suspicious. Keep it simple and clean. Let your words do the talking.
Rule #3: Don't Send Attachments
With the prevalence of viruses and other corrupting software, very few attachments make it through spam filters. Today, with the ability to safely embed both images and web links in your e-mail, sending attachments is becoming increasingly unnecessary.
Rule #4: Become a "Student of Spam"
Study the spam messages that make it into your inbox. How do you think they got through? What elements turn you away from reading it? Does the subject line make you want to open the message, or delete it? Knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing the rules for success.
Rule #5: Use a Tool to Check Your E-Mail
There are countless e-mail analyzing services and software
available on the web. Some of them are even free, like the cut and
paste word-checker at SpamDance. By running your text through such
a tool, it will help you optimize your language and ensure success
of your direct e-mail campaign.
Learn more about Marketing Breakthroughs' Web Marketing services.
