Preventing emails from being labeled as 'Spam'

Sometimes you may be frustrated with having your emails marked as Spam in your customer email boxes. There are often several reasons why this might be the case; sometimes, it can boil down to the words used in the body of your email or if you insert hyperlinks / certain attachment types.

The fact is that about 85% of all email sent is Spam, so whether or not your email is legitimate, if a receiving host or email spam program is aggressive or set a certain way, your emails could very quickly get marked as Spam. Unfortunately, this is not a server or hosting issue. This is a general issue with email that you will find no matter where you host your email. However, this article discusses what you can do from your end...

Steps to take when your emails are flagged as Spam

Several things may help, but remember these are suggestions and not a guarantee that your email will no longer be filtered as Spam: Make sure you are not violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Verify that your emails make the grade and you're not violating standard filtering rules.

1. Make sure you do not violate the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Verify that your emails make the grade and you're not violating standard filtering rules.

2. Avoid using certain high-risk words in emails you are sending. Many sites on the internet provide lists of words to avoid to help reduce the likelihood of your emails being marked as Spam.

3. Ensure the ratio of images to text is balanced and emails don't become too large.

4. Send your customers a personal email requesting that they white-list your domain so your business emails aren't filtered into Spam. In this, I'm referring to a "personal" email as one that doesn't include your marketing links or business advertisements or enhancements that may flag the email as something other than personal.

5. Check to make sure that your Email Authentication is enabled. This helps stop Spam coming from your email address (even if you're not sending any you know of). One of the common tactics by spammers out there is to spoof emails from your domain. This causes you to get blacklisted even though you're not sending emails. (If you are a DigitalFlare client, please ask us if you require assistance setting this up!).

6. If all else fails, consider a paid service or use a sizeable specific email host for sending business emails- like Google Mail. There are services for sending out emails for marketing, such as MailChimp.com. Check them out as possible solutions since they can provide business email and newsletter services.

7. Examine your email bounces. When an email bounces, it will tell you "why" it's being bounced and give you a source or reason for the bounce. You should investigate if you're being listed on a service (that you may not be aware of). In some cases, you can easily remove yourself from a list by contacting the authority that has blacklisted you. This may not always be the same person as the email administrator of that server. However, you can also email an email administrator of the service to find out why your emails are being blocked. Though, I would only do this after examining the reason for the block and ensuring you have done your due diligence by reading their bounce messages and confirming that you're not sending Spam.