Email continues to be a powerful marketing tool for driving online sales, web traffic, social media growth and more. But before any of these things happen, the people on your email list have to see the message. What’s the best way to do this? Make sure it lands in their Inbox folder instead of the promotions tab or worse – SPAM! There are a few key ways inbox providers determine if you deserve a spot in your recipient’s inbox, like if they’ve previously interacted with your emails, replied back, moved it out of the junk folder or added you to their address book. Read on for more tips, tricks, dos and don’ts to make the most of your next campaign. Top 5 things marketers can do to ensure your campaign lands in the inbox:

1. Only email people who have given you permission. Lists that are built organically have open rates that are 5 times higher than purchased or scraped lists and receive 4 times fewer spam complaints. This leads to increased opens and reduced spam complaints which are positive signals in the eyes of email providers.

• Valuable incentives + simple subscribe opportunities = A great way to build a huge email list
  • By offering an amazing incentive and having prominent subscribe opportunities that make it easy to join your list, you can build a high-quality email list that ensures your email campaigns get delivered to everyone.
• Go here to read more on how to build email lists.

2. Use a familiar “From” name. According to research, 68% of Americans base their decision to open an email campaign on what’s in from line. Instead of being clever, snarky or silly, put something that readers will instantly recognize—like your or your company’s name!
3. Use segmentation to send targeted, relevant campaigns. Rather than sending the same email to your entire list, try segmenting your list and targeting the campaign to those who you know are going to be interested.

• Bonus: MailChimp has easy segmentation options that let you view and send to customers based on what they order, when they order, how much they spend and other criteria.
  • MailChimp offers a selection of pre-built e-commerce segments for paid users who have API 3.0 e-commerce data in their account.
  • These segments are located in your saved segments, and can be used as-is or edited to fit your needs.
  • To see what is offered, go here.

4. Use a real reply-to address in your campaigns. A key indicator that email providers use to determine whether your email makes the inbox is whether or not you have received responses to previous emails.

• When creating email campaigns, avoid using emails like noreply@yourcompany.com as the reply-to address. Instead use addresses like:
  • hello@yourcompany.com
  • support@yourcompany.com
  • yourname@yourcompany.com

5. Configure your account to send from your business domain. There is a setting in your account that allows you to send campaigns from your own domain name (i.e. yourbusiness.com). This again gives subscribers and providers another indication that you’re a real person sending a valuable email.

A few of our other favorite tips:

• Don’t sound like a Spammer! The more “spam-like” text and phrases you use, the less likely it is to end up in the inbox. There are a number of free software solutions to check the “spam score” of an email before you send it, but there are also a few, basic rules:
  • Don’t use the word “free” too many times
  • Don’t use ALL CAPS
  • Don’t use too many colored fonts
  • Only use one exclamation point at a time
  • Stay away from words you’d see in spam – you can use your imagination here
• Don’t use “The Big Image.” Embedding images in email isn’t a bad idea, but don’t send an email that’s just one, big image file. When a spam filter can’t read any real text in an email and only sees an image, it assumes the worst.
• Provide a clear unsubscribe link. Providing a clear way to unsubscribe means that users are less likely to get frustrated and just mark you as spam.
• Make sure any image you select is AT LEAST 580 pixels X 400 pixels. Gmail will resize larger images. However, if an image is smaller than the suggested size, Gmail will enlarge your image and it will become blurry!

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