How to avoid the spam filters and get straight to the inbox

If we’re going to talk about spam, we just have to begin with a quote:

Hey there, friend. I have a great proposal for you. My uncle owned a gold-mine in the Congo and because he died last month, the gold and the wealth are now all mine. I need some help transferring all of this, so I thought you could help me. I need your bank-details, so I can send all the money to your account…

Does it sound familiar?

If you’ve been online for long enough it probably does, but it shouldn’t. Emails like this are generic spam, and as such, they trigger spam filters and land in the Junk folder, away from your attention.

But when YOU send an email to YOUR prospects, the spam folder is not where you want to arrive. We want and need to get straight to the primary inbox.

Think of this scenario for a moment – you have a list of contacts ready, you prepared the content for all of your emails, you have setup your emailing tool and you just clicked the SEND button while holding your fingers crossed. But what if all your efforts were in vain and none of the emails ever actually reach your targets’ inboxes? Instead, all those emails trigger various spam filters and end up in the Junk / Spam folder.

This is where our today’s post comes into play, because it’s a short guide that can help you avoid all spam filters and simply reach your prospects without any issues. Have you got 5 minutes to spare? Excellent, because this will take less than that. Let’s get to it.

The thing everyone should always start with is a simple tool like Mail-Tester.com. It will analyze your email and show you just how spammy it is, including both the actual content of the email, as well as the technical tidbits, like whether your email address or IP you’re sending from have already been reported and listed somewhere as unwanted.

Trust me, it’s well worth your time, and it’s free as well!

And then, what you want to do once you’ve ran an email testing tool, is go through the list below and make sure you’re sticking to all of the points. That way you’re making sure that you’re staying above the spam radar and providing your prospect with an email that they will very likely want to reply to. Here’s our checklist:

• Personalize your emails. As much as you can – the more, the better.
• Use spam checkers like the one above, or others, before you send emails. No point in wasting time first and then checking a few days later while waiting for replies that would never come.
• Make sure to avoid spam words and phrases. You can check this list of spammy phrases compiled
• Is your IP address new? In case it is, it’s best to increase the sending volume gradually over 4-6 weeks time. Sending a massive amount of emails straight off the bat will trigger some spam filter and get you blacklisted almost 100% of the time.
• NO ATTACHMENTS AND NO CAPS LOCK. You can send files later, once you are in an active conversation with the prospect.
• Stick to plain text or simple HTML emails. Keep it simple. Using fancy HTML templates of various email sending platforms will land you in the Promotions folder or perhaps even be labeled as spam.
• Either: a) add a Unsubscribe link; or, even better: b) finish the email with something like “Do let me know if you are not the right person, I will no longer email you.”
• If you HAVE to use images, maintain a good text to image ratio.
• Make sure your DKIM and SPF are properly set-up. Sounds more technically advanced than it is, don’t worry.
• Do NOT deceive or lie to your recipient. Ever. It won’t trigger a filter, but it won’t get you anyway in the long run, either.
• Make sure it’s visible what the “sent from” and “reply-to” address is. It should be your address, no trickery.

And to conclude the list of things to keep in mind, here comes the kicker:
Do not let your recipients think in any way that you are spamming them. It all boils down to that.

P.S. Mass-emailing with Plaformax won’t get you into the spam folder easily, since all the emails are sent from your very own email account! Feel free to check out this and other features of Platformax, we’re rather certain it’s a tool you would love to have and use.