Creating emails that avoid spam filters involves a combination of best practices in content, formatting, and technical aspects. Here's a checklist for you to follow:
Optimise Subject Lines:
Keep subject lines relevant to the email content. Everything is scanned for Spam to avoid customers of Google, Microsoft etc from falling foul. If your subject line talks about “An Amazing Job Role For John” and the content doesn’t involve something similar, you’re unlikely to get past the filter.
Subject lines should ideally be less than 60 characters long. This is not just for Spam, it’s also a general outreach best practice. The shorter, snappier and more personal the better.
Personalise Your Emails:
Use the recipient's name and personalise content based on their preferences or previous interactions. This is Outreach 101 here at SuperReach. Personalisation is key to success, the days of spraying and praying with un-personalised, generic or mass-marketing email is over.
Provide Clear and Relevant Content:
Ensure that your email content is pertinent to the recipient.
Avoid using excessive links or attachments. The most common hack in email is people clicking links and therefore we recommend never sharing links unless a clear existing relationship is established over email first.
Keep Punctuation to a Minimum:
Limit the use of punctuation, especially exclamation points. Urgency is a common theme in Spam emails and the easiest way to convey urgency in written content is punctuation.
Don't Include Too Many Images:
Maintain a balanced text-to-image ratio to lower the risk of triggering spam filters. Especially in non-marketing emails we recommend limiting images in email to your email signature only
Compress Your Images AND Attachments:
Compress images using tools like TinyPNG.com or CompressJPEG.com to avoid filtration issues, spam filter concerns, and improve deliverability.
Same goes for attachments. The general limit is 10mb and trying to send more is not a good idea as the email provider will generate a downloadable link for that and you don’t want to be sharing more links than necessary.
Include a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA):
Clearly state the next steps you want the recipient to take.
Use actionable language without being overly aggressive.
When sending hyper-personalised emails don’t use buttons or clickable images.
Avoid Spam Trigger Words:
Email providers have extensive lists of trigger words that spammers usually use and if you take a look at your own Spam folder you’d recognise them: “Act Now”, “Once In A Lifetime..”, “Congratulations” are good examples of what to avoid.
Regularly Clean Your Email List:
Remove inactive or bounced email addresses from your list regularly.
This will stop your email provider from noting that you’re not a robot.
Provide an Unsubscribe Option:
Include a clear and easy-to-find unsubscribe link in all marketing emails and a clear message in your email signature that states you will honour unsubscribe requests if sending a text-based personalised message.
Include a physical address as failure to do so will result in the likelihood of emails being caught in spam filters.
Stick to Default Fonts:
Unusual fonts can often activate spam filters. Use default fonts, such as Sans Serif, provided by your email service to assure legitimacy.
Please, don’t use Comic Sans.