Email marketing can be a waste of time and resources if you’re not getting the highest delivery rate and response rate possible. While we at Online Outbox take care of the geeky aspect to facilitate your goals, there are still a couple things you can do that might help to increase the delivery rate of your campaigns:
1. Schedule your email campaigns. Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday work great.
Although you are able to send out campaigns immediately or anytime you wish, strategically scheduling campaigns can produce better results. For instance, if you are using our newsletter subscription form on your web site, advise each and every subscriber exactly when to expect your newsletter. This is also a good practice if you plan on sending out a series of emails. Your recipients will come to expect your email to hit their inbox on regular intervals making them more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.
2. Make it easier for readers to recognize your emails.
Like we said on Avoiding the Spam Filters and Other Email Marketing Tips – Consistency is King. Functional email templates are made available to all of our customers. You are free to customize them as you see fit. Already have an HTML email template from your old email service provider? That’s perfectly fine. You can import the HTML template file and use it on your Online Outbox campaigns. Incorporate a logo or tagline. Whatever you do, remain consistent to reduce the chances of readers reporting your email as spam.
3. Include the current date in the content.
Adding a correct date indicates when the campaign was sent. Spam filters sometimes assign spam score points if the date is not mentioned or provided incorrectly.
4. Don’t forget to pull the Text content from the HTML editor.
Before sending out an HTML email, make sure that the plain text version is attached. Messages sent in “Multipart” are delivered in a way that subscribers without active HTML-Viewer still get a decent looking e-mail. Make sure that the HTML and text version have the same or very similar content otherwise you’ll get more spam points.
5. Avoid excessive graphics and complex HTML.
Several spam rules involve issues related to HTML. If the newsletter has too many graphic elements, it gets just as many spam score points. Most email clients and webmail services automatically blocks images so if users don’t understand what the mail is about, your email is most likely headed towards being reported as spam. Try to keep it simple – the percentage of text should be higher than the percentage of HTML or images for maximum readability.
6. (Nicely) Ask your recipients to whitelist you.
One smart way to increase deliverability especially for future messages is to ask your readers to add you to whitelists or their address book.
7. Links must be clean.
If there’s a need to include link/s in your email campaigns, ensure that none of those are blacklisted URLs. Exert a little extra effort to verify the sites you are linking to and save your campaign from getting some more spam points. You can use online tools like MXToolbox.com or BlackListAlert.org for this purpose.
8. The Test.
We’ve said it before but we will remind you again – test, test, test BUT avoid using the word “test” in the subject line when sending live trial message to yourself or a personal test list. At this point, you probably know the reason – spam filters, again. Generic test messages are viewed as spam so when conducting your diagnosis, test using the actual email subject and content.
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