Take care of the technical aspects of your mailing

An email campaign is still one of the better ways to reach your customers and users. Unfortunately, your marketing message has a good chance of ending up in your customer’s spam folder rather than in the inbox – one in five messages is stopped by spam filters before reaching the recipient. When they do reach your customer, the question remains in which box the artificial intelligence will put your mail: the priority IN box? Unimportant email? social? spam? Junk?

There are two very important ways to prevent your mail from being considered spam. The first is actually the simplest, because these are simple technical rules that you should pay attention to. Automatic spam filters respond to triggers that can be easily avoided.

A good email marketing campaign starts with a reputable email provider. That’s why we’re working with HubSpot at wekreate. HubSpot has a very good reputation and ensures that abusers are punished before emails leave the HubSpot server.

Technical things to watch out for:

Your reputation as sender , both of your domain and the IP address of your mail server. If you use that IP address together with others who do commit spam, the IP address can end up on the blacklists, which in turn has a negative impact on the reputation of your domain name.
Therefore make sure that your domain AND hosting is with a good and above all reliable provider. Good and reliable often go hand in hand with a slightly higher price. Although this extra cost melts like snow in the sun if you take into account that your hard work that you put into your email marketing will finally reach your customer.
The Right Email Service Provider . Go for an ESP that bets hard on the reputation of your sending IPs. You can even work with a separate set-up for your marketing emails and your transactional emails. Separate sending of certain matters is therefore recommended, but also recommended when you set up e-mail automation!
A healthy address file . Immediately delete the e-mail addresses where the e-mail no longer arrives or that are no longer correct (bounces). Compile your address list yourself and only on an opt-in basis. So don’t buy commercial lists – they often contain junk addresses and even spam traps.
A spam trap is an address specially created by inbox providers to track down dubious senders.

In our article “Are you a spammer? Don’t make these mistakes” we take a closer look at these topics.

The content of your email is ALWAYS decisive

The second way is much more difficult. This is personal, your customer should not feel your mail as spam. If it finds your e-mail spam, and sends it unopened straight to the trash, the AI of the mail program will remember this and all your e-mails will disappear in the spam folder in the future. Your customer shouldn’t open every email from you, but if you have a reasonable open and click ratio, your email will be less likely to end up in the spam box.

Tip: You can ask your customer to click your mail as “safe sender” in this case you put the AI out of play.

Spam is in the eye of the beholder, make sure your email doesn’t feel like spam to the recipient.

Don’t act like a spammer, we give some practical tips:

DO NOT send weekly. Only do it when you have something valuable to say , a real action.
Create a segmented mailing list based on your customers’ preferences or their purchase history.
Segmentation also helps come up with a good subject line . For example, ‘Small prices for large sizes’ for ladies or gentlemen who usually buy clothes or shoes with a size larger, will appeal more than “Big Discounts”.
When subscribing to the newsletter via a ‘ preference center ‘, let your customer also choose which messages he would like to receive. This gives him the feeling of being in control.
Clearly state a button or link to unsubscribe from your mailing. This also increases confidence in your mailings. If that button is missing, you risk that your customer will file a complaint about spam. This has a negative effect on the reputation of your domain name, and is also in violation of the GDPR legislation. In other words, the unsubscribe button MUST be in every newsletter.
Think of a good text, with clear call to actions . Copywriters can certainly help with this: they are wizards with texts!
Also be consistent . Always use the same email address as the sender, so that your emails are recognizable. This also increases trust, and therefore commitment.
Make sure your emails are also optimized for mobile devices ! So responsive.
Just like your website and everything you do digitally!

Things to avoid in your emails:

Too heavy (large) mails – the ideal mail is between 15 kb and 100 kb in size
Url shorteners like bit.ly – the spam filters will punish you mercilessly for that!
Mails that consist of only one image – most mail programs do not automatically load the image. The extra click your recipient has to make to see your message is one too many!

A good email marketing campaign requires psychological insight and a lot of restraint. wekreate can help you set up your mailing correctly. This way you maximize the chance of reaching your customer with your message.

Knowing more? Contact us.