Learn to Avoid Spam Filters with High-Quality Emails.
Learn to Avoid Spam Filters with High-Quality Emails. Firstly Spam filters mean your email landed anywhere in a G Suite account with a corporate spam filter attached to it, then congrats!🎉 Secondly, If your recipients never see your email in their inboxes. That means the work you’re doing creating and running your email marketing campaigns is a waste of time.
HubSpot. gives the following definition of email deliver ability: Figuring out how well your emails are getting into people’s inboxes is called measuring sender success.
Thankfully, you have arrived! I am glad you are here.
In this part: we will learn how to ensure that your emails arrive in the inbox and not the spam folder? But How? By following these steps:
- Spam Filters 101
- How did Spam Filters work?
- Why does this matter?
- What about safe links?
- How to get the best sending score?
- How do you build a successful sending reputation?
- What exactly is Warming Up IP?
- More Tips Before You Launch Your Campaigns
- A/B Split Testing.
Let us First start by identifying how SPAM FILTERS work. Then after that, we can understand how to bypass it!
- Spam Filters 101
If you send an email to someone, let us say to a Gmail account, what is happening in the background is that you are contacting or communicating with the Gmail Mail System. And Gmail, Like any Email Service Provider, has what we name Spam Filters, which are a layer of security to protect their users from fraud & spam messages. See the diagram below:
As you can see, anytime you send a message to a target mailbox, the mail server will filter the message received using spam filters to decide whether or not it is spam.
How did Spam Filters work?
To send your emails directly to the inbox, you need to pass spam filters! And if you need to pass spam filters, then understand how they work.
Years ago, Spam Filters was Set up to filter emails based on specific rules. Such as image ratio in emails, Blacklisted domains, and spam. Sender Reputation, Keywords, Volume
NO, I am not claiming they are no longer factors. However, as technology changed, the way the spam filters work changed.
Spam filters are clever. They can learn with the new machine learning technology!. So spam filters examine billions of emails and learn from user activity and patterns on How to filter spam emails?
Why does this matter?
Let us see some examples: Before, in the old days! If you sent emails with a low volume, It would be good, then your emails would pass the filters. But today, these clever filters will detect spam even if you send ten emails every day.
Even if you send several inconsistent emails, such as suddenly sending 100 emails per day when you were previously sending 10-20 emails per day, this may flag you as spam. Why important to be consistent when sending emails?. (We will go over this in further detail later.)
Another example is your domain. If you get a new Domain today, it may be block-listed automatically for 30 days as a precaution. Furthermore, using an old Domain is better for your domain reputation.
So, yes, it is matters! And you must learn the new game is rules!
5Rules to avoid spam filters and successfully deliver marketing messages:
- Subject Line & Message Body
- Your Sending Domain
- URLs & Links
- Sending Score
- Sending The Reputation
- 1-Subject Line & Message Body
Subject line
When you send an email, the two main parts that make your message are the Subject line and the Message Body. Simply put, you must ensure that both will set off the spam filter. How?
Just make sure to avoid using any negative, bad words or spammy phrases in your subject line or message content. To do so, that simply the following steps:
When you have finished writing the subject line, test it with the subject line selection to confirm it is a good subject line. So, use a service like SendCheckit Subject Line Tester, a free online tool, and make sure you get a good score.
Example of a Bad Subject Line:
GET A FREE [100$] GIFT – CLICK HERE!
Example This subject line contains bad and Spammy keywords such as Get, Free, here.
Also, it contains Bad characters like the exclamation mark (!)and the All caps letters.
Example of a Good Subject Line:
Want to Boost Conversions😎
Simple, Clean, and Perfect Subject Line to use.✔️
Message body
The Message Body, like the Subject Line, must not contain any spammy or bad words, such as the following:
Get Rich, Earn $, 100% Free, FREE ….and other keywords.❌
You can check a list of Spammy keywords at Hubspot here.
Other than spammy keywords, there are a few effective email writing strategies to follow:
- Text-to-Image -Ratio: Spam filters suspect and anticipate emails that often contain images.
- Add links thoughtfully: You should not include links in an email more than three times. (We will go over links in greater detail later)
- Personalization: Add personalization (person name or company name) into your emails.
Note: Personalization: although personalization is preferred, in your emails. But after doing a lot of testing and checking different sources, it does not seem too alarming, except maybe in Cold Email Marketing.
2-Your Sending Domain
The second most important consideration is your domain name. The domain that you are using to send emails.
Example: I use hello@toolsem.com in my campaigns, so toolsem.com is my sending domain.
Before sending your email campaigns, double-check that your domain is not Blacklisted. How do you check?
Just go to MXtoolbox.com and use the Blacklist tool, which will reveal you the status of your domain in seconds; here is mine:
Note If your domain is still new, it may be Blacklisted automatically by SEM FRESH. That is normal, and it will be removed automatically after 15-30 days.
IMPORTANT: If you are sending cold emails, it is best to use a domain other than your primary business. So if your domain is Blacklisted, your primary will remain unaffected.
For example, my main domain is toolsem.com. when I do some research and tests about cold emails, or when I send some cold email campaigns, I use another domain, which is toolsem.net
- 3- URLs & Links
Spam Filters are sensitive to the links that attach to your emails because where the user will take any action.
So you need to take care very well when attaching your links.
The first thing you should check is whether the domain URLs are Blacklisted or not. And whether it’s safe or not.
Regarding the Blacklist, I mentioned that you should check it with Mxtoolbox.
What about safe links?
To test any URL, you can use Google Safe Browsing, Kaspersky VirusDesk, or Phishtank.
Always double-check your links before adding them. That is one.
The second thing you should be concerned with is affiliate links and CPA links. Never, ever include affiliate links in your emails!
Then What To Do?!
- Cloak Your URLs.
- Or Use a Landing Page.
- 4- Sending Score
Sending scores is very important, and you should aim at least 9/10 – 10/10 your lovely total as a sensing score in Mail-tester.
How to get the best sending score?
To get the best score: of 10/10, you should focus on the following.
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
- DKIM ( DomainKeys Identified Mail )
- DMARC
- Reverse DNS (PTR)
- Message body.
- 5- Sending The Reputation
You should be aware of something crucial: sending reputation is only something you can manage if you use your SMTP server or an SMTP service with a Dedicated IP.
Why? Because Sending Reputation refers to the standing of the sending IP address.
How do you build a successful sending reputation?
Simply the answer: Warm up the SMTP Server.
Warming Up your SMTP server
When you create a new SMTP server with a new IP address, you must warm it up before you can begin sending email marketing campaigns to your Internet Protocol Address. Like a new machine or a new tool!
What exactly is Warming Up IP?
When you have a brand new IP address for your SMTP, it has no reputation on the internet and is unknown to ISPs (internet service providers).
So IP warming is the process of improving Your Internet Reputation by gradually increasing the volume of mail sent with your IP address on a predetermined timetable.
More Tips Before You Launch Your Campaigns
A/B Split Testing
In the context of email A/B testings process of sending one variant of your campaign to a subset of your subscribers and a different variation to another subset of your subscribers, with the ultimate goal of determining which variation the campaign garners the best results.
As an example, you create two email templates, and you send the first template to 50% of your subscribers and the other template to 50%.
After you’ve ensured that your system is almost perfect, the best thing to do is test it before sending any campaigns to see how it performs. Aside from Mail-tester and calculating your sending score, you should test how well your emails perform. As a result, I prefer to use the Inbox Tool by Gmass.co
Conclusion
If your recipients never see your emails in their inboxes, the work you put into creating and running your email marketing campaign will be waste your time. Gmail filters examine billions of emails and learn from user activity and patterns on How to filter spam emails?. Spam filters can learn with the new machine learning technology. Subject Line & Message Body are the two main parts that make an email. You must ensure that both will set off the spam filter.
Use a service like SendCheckit Subject Line Tester, a free online tool, to help you get a good subject line. If you are sending cold emails, it is best to use a domain other than your primary business. Always double-check your links before adding them. The sending score is critical, and you should aim at least 9/10 – 10/10 your email total as a sensing score.
When you create a new SMTP server with a new IP address, you must warm it up before you may begin sending the email marketing campaigns. Warming Up IP is the process of improving Your Internet Reputation by gradually increasing the volume of mail sent with your IP address.
