Small Business Design Resources

Keeping Your Emails Out of Spam Folders

Spam filters are great at keeping unwanted emails from filling up our inboxes. However, sometimes important emails are caught up in the filter, sending them to the spam folder to possibly never be seen by their recipient. You can’t always rely on your patrons to add your email to their “safe” list, but why should your updates and newsletters be unfairly cast to the junk folder? There are ways you can cleverly word your emails to make sure they’re making it through.

The best thing you can do to avoid spam filters is to steer clear of some of the major phrasing that these bots are looking for. These would be things like “click here” or “free offer.” These gimmicky phrases raise red flags. Also, watch your punctuation. You might be really excited about an offer you’re sending to your patrons, but if you use ALL CAPS WITH MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION POINTS…you might just wind up in the spam folder!!!!!!!! What about HTML in your emails? HTML is fine to include, but be sure to do it right. Don’t use too much Red or Green font colors either.

Messy coding often gets confused as spam. Don’t use programs like Microsoft Word to convert text to HTML. Often, large graphics or pictures with very little wording will not pass a spam filter, so make sure you’ve got plenty of text to accompany any visual media. Take a look at your junk inbox. You may notice a lot of online pharmaceutical emails boasting that you can buy online for cheap. Not only are these often scams that end up with identity theft and loss of funds, they’re usually pretty poorly written. Spam bots look for misspellings in the subject line as well as wording in the body of the email. These drug emails usually have a lot of prices listed. The over-mentioning of prices usually marks an email as spam.

Newsletters are a great part of your small business design, so don’t be detoured from creating them as part of your marketing system. Just be smart when you’re sending out newsletters or other promotional emails and you’ll be sure to pass the spam bot’s criteria. An honest email with proper spelling, html and subject lines will most likely make it through to your client’s inbox.

Can email marketing target a specific geographic location?

In one of my previous posts, I talked about how geotargeting – targeting specific geographic areas – can be a great marketing technique for small business owners. I’ve also talked about the importance of email marketing and building an email list from scratch, which isn’t nearly as intimidating as many people think. Many of you have been wondering if there’s a way to put these two marketing techniques together—can you target a specific location using email marketing?

This is a great question, and the answer is yes. You can – and in some cases should – use geotargeting for your email marketing campaigns. There are many email marketing situations where it’s helpful to target specific locations:

• If your small business is only set up to serve local customers—for example, a dry cleaner or pet grooming business;
• If you sell products that are only useful in certain climates, like winter gear;
• If your product is only available in certain areas, or has varying release dates—for example, a clothing line that will be released locally several weeks before it’s available nationwide;
• If you sell internationally and want to personalize emails with the appropriate language or pricing structure depending on the country.

These are just a few reasons you might want to target a specific geographic location with your email marketing—you can probably think of a number of other ways email geotargeting can work for you.

How to target a specific geographic location with email marketing

To be geographically specific in your email marketing, you will need to collect your visitors’ location when you collect their email address. There are a couple ways you can do this:

• Include a field in your email sign-up form for location. Because having a large number of fields to fill out makes people less likely to sign up, it’s best to keep this short and simple. Asking for a zip code is one of the easiest ways to collect geographic location.
• Target email subscribers based on their IP address. IP addresses can be traced back to a geographic location with a large amount of accuracy, providing you with the country, state, and even city of your subscriber. Email marketers like AWeber, the company I use, make it very easy to segment your email list by location using IP addresses.

Building An Email List From Scratch

Email marketing sounds intimidating to many small business owners, but it’s an excellent way to promote your products and services. In addition to being one of the most up-to-date marketing methods, email marketing has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive – no paper or printing costs, no postage fees, and no promotional materials left unused.

But how do you build an email list from scratch? Although you can buy or rent email lists, there are several disadvantages to that method: it can be expensive, you can’t be sure the addresses were obtained legitimately, and you have no assurance that you’re reaching your target audience. Instead, use these simple tips to create a more useful opt-in list, composed of people who have asked to be included:

• Take every opportunity to ask. Promote your email list in correspondence with your current customers, on your printed promotional materials (business cards, brochures, etc.), and in person at networking events. Whenever you exchange business cards with someone, ask if you can put them on your email list. Place a “Join Our Email List” link in your email signature, with a brief description of the benefits of doing so.
  

• Make it easy. Provide a simple, interactive form on your website. Place it in a prominent area on the front page, above the fold, and include a form on every page of your site so visitors will be reminded to sign up as they browse. If you have a physical location, offer a way to sign up at the cash register or front desk.

• Offer incentives. People rarely give away their email address for no clear reason, but provide it willingly as a way to enter a contest, receive discounts, and take advantage of Internet-only specials. Giving away a free e-book, white paper, or other useful information in exchange for an email address is another popular method. This is a great opportunity to share some of your personal expertise with your customers by creating your own guide or brief e-book.

• Respect your clients’ privacy. People are wary of spam email, so make it clear that you will not sell or rent your email list to third parties, and you will only send emails that your clients have opted-in to receive. Although it can be tempting to use your sign-up form as an opportunity for market research, don’t ask for personal information like age or phone number. People are much more likely to sign up if they only need to enter their email address.

• Use a professional. Email marketing services can be surprisingly affordable, and their tools and expertise can be well worth the price. Keep in mind that many professional email marketing services require that address lists you provide be confirmed by the email users before you can begin emailing them. The best way to be sure the email user will confirm is if they provided you with their email address themselves, which is another reason to use the above tips to create your own list instead of buying one. This is the case with AWeber, the email marketer I use and one I highly recommend (they have a great autoresponder feature that I love).

• Make it worth it. Use your email list as an opportunity to provide your clients with high-quality information, great deals, and real expertise. Your subscribers will look forward to your communications and forward them on to their friends, keeping your email list – and customer list – growing.

Related articles by outside sources

• “Email Ethics” Or Why My Autoresponders Will Be Changed To Noreply (howtospoter.com)
• Subscription forms: list growth and sign-up language (email-marketing-reports.com)
• Call That Spam (weatherby.net)