Getting your emails delivered to your recipient's inbox is important! We have compiled a list of resources to help you avoid getting sent to the SPAM folder/promotions tab or getting bounced out completely.
1. A Clean List
- Email people who have opted-in to receive content from you.
- Remove people from your list who have not engaged/responded to emails from you in more than 6 months or so (or send them an email to re-opt-in).
- Send emails to people based on their interests. This will increase open and click-through rates, creating better engagement and a better sender reputation – essential in getting to the inbox!
- Do not send from a "gmail.com", "hotmail.com", or "yahoo.com" address (see article linked above).
- Send from a person, not a "company@" or "sales@" email address.
- This removes the "on behalf of" language from your from address.
- Monitor your bounce rates and make sure they are below 1% at all times
- Maintain high open and click through rates
- Avoid mismatched URLs by linking part of your text, not the URL itself
- Avoid large images or too many images (try for a 60/40 text to image ratio at the very least)
- Never send an email that is just one large image
- Avoid spam-like words (free, instant, guaranteed, etc)
- Avoid misspelling, excessive exclamation marks, and ALL CAPS
- Avoid "loud" colors like red or green
- Avoid "sloppy" HTML or HTML copied from Microsoft Word
- Send content based on the contact's interests
- If necessary, check your content with a test service like EmailOnAcid
7. An Awareness of why Emails might Bounce
- Make sure you are not consistently re-enabling emails that are bouncing due to any of the reasons listed in the article above.
- Some servers may reject your email despite your best efforts. If you have a relationship with a particular individual or company and you are experiencing a consistent SPAM or bounce issue, ask them to have their IT team white-list your domain.
- Gmail Users can manually set whether or not something is in the Promotions tab. Send a note to your Gmail recipients asking them to move your emails to their primary inbox instead of the Promotions tab.
- Make sure you are sending to 5,000 or less contacts at one time. When ISPs see large groups of the same email, they assume they are SPAM and filter them accordingly.
- Remember to segment!
It is always good to remember that your deliverability to the inbox when using an email service like Hatchbuck will differ from sending individual emails through Outlook or Gmail. Also, it is impossible to completely understand and avoid SPAM/Promotion filters. The items above, however, should help your deliverability increase tremendously!
If you have additional questions or are concerned about your bounce rate, please email our Support Team at support@hatchbuck.com for help.