Tips for Polishing Your Marketing E-mails

How do spam filters decide to send an e-mail to the junk folder?
Spam filters work on an ever-changing list of criteria. Some of this criterion is actually user-based. This means that every time you hit the “spam” button on an unwanted e-mail, your spam filter collects information on that e-mail so that it can reject it in the future. Nonetheless, there are a couple of basic principles a business owner can follow to pass through spam filters and get to inboxes.
Reason 1 – Pictures
The key to adding images in an email campaign is to remember these two principles: 1. Avoid adding too many 2. Don’t place important text on images Images in emails can be set up to download a virus into computers. For this reason, many e-mail filters are set up to prevent automatic download of images thus rendering them as unseeable. Too many images in an e-mail mailing will show up as boxes with red x’s and make your mailing look like it was flagged at first glance. Secondly, any text that was written and saved into an image will be unreadable. Persons receiving your e-mail will only be able to see that text as secondary information, meaning if the recipient decides to allow your images to be downloaded and viewed.
Reason 2 – Trigger Words
- Excessive use of symbols like *, $ and % or !!!!!
- Writing in ALL CAPS LIKE YOU ARE YELLING
- Leaving the Subject line blank
- Spam trigger words like “Free”, “Specials”, “Discounts”, “Guarantee”, etc.
- Excessive use of different fonts and colors
Reason 3 – Email Content

Reason 4 – Email Activity
Lastly, it’s up to you to stay on top of things. Check the e-mails that are bounced back to you. Do you see any misspellings off the bat? For example, mary_smith@gmmail.com. The bounce back e-mail will usually have some additional information included such as timeouts, full inboxes, and e-mails flagged as spam. When a recipient sends you a request to unsubscribe, take them off your mailing list as soon as possible. Otherwise, that person may decide to send you to the junk folder if they receive another marketing e-mail from you, a decision that can affect how spam filters will react to your e-mails sent out to other inboxes. Some e-mail marketing programs suggest moving the unsubscribe button to the top of the e-mail to encourage the recipient to hit the “Unsubscribe” button instead of the “Spam” button to protect e-mail deliverability to the rest of the recipient list. I have followed all of the criteria above but I am still receiving a huge bounce-back rate. How do I find a good automated e-mail marketing program? • A good relationship with e-mail service providers • CAN-SPAM compliant • Unsubscribe option standard on marketing e-mails • Curbed e-mail send rate There are many automated e-mail programs out there. All of them promise to send out amazing e-mails with ultimate customizability options. No matter how good your e-mail looks, it is useless if it doesn’t make it into the potential client’s inbox. A reliable e-mail marketing program will have a good relationship with e-mail service providers thus improving your bounce back rate. For bed and breakfasts looking into e-mail marketing, the Auto Pilot edition of Reservation Nexus has guidelines for its bed and breakfast subscribers to ensure its reputability with e-mail service providers. A limit of 12 newsletters can be sent a year to keep Auto Pilot on the whitelist of e-mail service providers. Instead of entering in e-mails manually, Auto Pilot sends out e-mails only to your guest database. All promotional e-mails are permission-based, where only guests that have opted-in either online or by phone will receive promotional e-mails. Guests can unsubscribe at any time via an automatic unsubscribe link at the bottom of an e-mail. Make sure to check if the e-mail marketing program you want to use will slow your e-mail send rate. Any e-mail server that sends out 150 e-mails at once will most certainly raise red flags with spam filters.