Email has become a very crucial part of everyday advertising. And, at first glance, email marketing is relatively easy to carry out. However, it is not always just as easy as writing and then sending; there are many factors to consider before sending an email out for thousands of your customers to see. One of the most important of these factors is ensuring that you make it through the various spam filters that your email will be sifted by before landing at it’s final destination.

You’ve probably spent a lot of time and money creating and refining your email lists, what good is it if a high percentage of your recipients never even see your email? It’s like spending thousands on refining a supercar, but fixing it with cheap road tires. Here are some simple guidelines and warning signs to be aware of before sending out an email campaign.

The first step is to be aware of what spam filters are going to look for. Here is a list of some of the juiciest spam bait:

• (!) and (?) marks
• Large font sizes
• Words in ALL CAPS

Some other factors that come into play are a small text to image ratio. In other words, lots of images, little text. Phrases like “Free” or “Money Back!”. Some filters even take into play when the email is sent; for instance, Saturday and Sundays are usually not very good choices, pick a weekday; besides, more people are going to read it on a weekday anyway. Don’t forget to apply all of these rules to the subject line of your email as well.

Here is a look at a simple test we recently performed on an email campaign. Here is a look at the results when first sending it through the spam check.

We then took out several (!) marks and reduced some very large fonts and ran it through once more.

These are just some simple, but crucial ways to make sure you are getting maximum use out of your email campaigns.

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