5 Quick Ways to Improve Your Delivery Rates

The number one question I get here at VerticalResponse: “How can I ensure my email reaches the inbox?”.

Here are 5 quick things you can do today to increase delivery rates and avoid nasty spam filters:

1. Get into the address book - Try adding "white-listing" instructions near the top of your email such as:
   
   To view all images and links, please add Widgets_Inc@mail.vresp.com to your address book.
    
   Of course where you see “Widgets_Inc” simply replace it with your From Label (or else you'll really confuse your readers!). Once accepted into your recipient's address book, future emails should arrive in their inbox immediately. See below how WorkZ does it.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Be wary of punctuation in your subject line – No matter how exciting your offer or announcement may be, try to keep your punctuation in check to avoid activating sensitive spam filters. Overuse of exclamation marks asterisks and dashes may lead to your email getting blocked or dumped into the junk folder. Ouch.
   
   
3. Use web-friendly fonts and colors - The bottom line is use simple and clean HTML when designing email campaigns. Using obscure fonts or intense colors might seem like a great way to set your email apart from other messages, but spammers also use that same logic. And when you're up against spam filters your outcome won't be good.  Try sticking with standard fonts such as Times, Arial and Verdana and stay away from colors like red, magenta, yellow and green. These tend to score higher than black or blue on many spam filters.
   
   
4. Beware of image-heavy emails - Many email readers have an option to hide images from  being displayed.  So when you're creating your email marketing campaign always ask yourself "how will this look if images are turned off?"  Make sure to have enough text copy above the fold so it's clear right from the start that this is an email your recipients are expecting. In addition, and very important, if the recipient has their images turned off and your entire email is one large graphic, the first thing they’ll see is your unsubscribe text and link -- ouch again. I’ve mentioned this in my previous blog here.
   
   
5. “Click here”...in moderation - Yes, I know, we all want LOTS of clicks but I'm referring to the actual text of "click here" which is also commonly seen in spam emails.  Encourage your recipients to click by mixing "Click Here" with other terms like "Read More" or "Visit Our Site".

There you have it, five quickies to help you get into the inbox. If you have more ideas please comment on this!

Comments

[B Woods Design]

Hi Steve-

When you are creating your HTML email piece, your have to use the path to your website ISP host, i.e. yourcompany.com/ then "imagename.gif", right? Right.

So as long as your email address which you use send your email newsletters from is the same host ISP as your image files, the subscriber WILL see the images since they have already 'whitelisted' that ISP as friendly.

When the subscriber adds your email to their address book, it's essentially the same thing as giving their email program/server the green flag that it's OK to receive ANY content from that ISP, whether it be emails, images, etc.

Hope that answers your question!

[Janine]

Matt - I've included a few examples. Does this help?

[Janine]

Hi Steve

If a user accepts you into their address book then you will not only go directly into their inbox, but your images, as a rule, will be displayed.

One thing you may want to think about, is RIGHT after they opt-in to your list, you can display directions about how they can add you to their address book. This way, if they do it right after they opt-in, you don't have to worry about getting them to do so later.

Make sense?

Peter, as an Entourage user, I'll have to get information on Outlook. Does anyone have any?

[Peter Dixon]

Great tips as usual.
Getting a responsible message across in a visually pleasing layout is getting progressively harder as spam filters and ISP "Protect Us."

Is there a way to customise outlook so we gat the images automatically. Then we could place that in n advisory to the "list"

Can outlook be selective to allow images from white list?

[Steven Fine]

Great tips but I don't understand how to actually Get into the address book

Why will them adding your address to their book help them view all images ????

Steve

[Matt Van Bogart]

It would be great to show some examples of best practices.

Now, that would be a great BLOG entry.

Matt