6 Tips to Avoid Spam Filters

One of the biggest frustrations is sending an email and later hearing your message ended up in the recipient’s spam folder. What gives? Surprisingly, there are several things you could be doing that are inadvertently making your messages become labeled as spam. Fortunately, there are measures you can take to prevent this. Here are six tips to have the best delivery rates possible.

1. Curate your list. 

If you send an email to a large list of contacts, but only 15% of your recipients open your email, inbox providers will be more likely to put your messages in the spam folder in the future.  

Curate your list to remove those who don't open your emails and focus on those who engage with your messages, and your mail will be more likely to be delivered into the primary folder of your recipients. 

2. Only send to people expecting to receive information from you.
 
Although it’s rarely our intention, sending to addresses that did not explicitly opt in to receive information would not only be a violation of our Terms of Service, but it would also be straight up spam. When recipients mark an email as “spam,” it harms your reputation as a sender. A bad sending reputation means bad inbox placement, while a good sending reputation means good inbox placement. Send to folks who have agreed and asked for you to reach out to them and you’ll be set!
 
Be sure to re-introduce yourself if it’s been awhile since your recipient has heard from you. Remind them of who you are and why they want to receive information from you. A great way to do this is with a quick video. Put a face to the name! Nothing like a video email to jog someone’s memory. 

3. Sending via another platform? Great! Bring on over those unsubscribes and bounces.
 
The best way to hurt your sending reputation is to send to a contact who has already unsubscribed or bounced. We can avoid this by exporting your previous unsubscribes and bounces from other CRMs and importing them into your BombBomb Suppression List. Your Suppression List in no way affects your overall BombBomb subscription or contact count and is only there for historical purposes. It is never sent to and will keep you from accidentally sending to one of those previous unsubscribers.
 
To learn how to import a suppression list, read here! 
 
4. Keep your branding CLEAR and CONSISTENT across all platforms.
 
People need to be able to recognize who they’re receiving email from right away. This means if you’re using another platform to send mail, you’ll want to make sure that your from address, from name, and header image are the same on your BombBomb emails as they are on your other platform.
 
Looking for a custom header or template? We’ve got you covered. Our Design team would love to help whip something together for you! Email our Customer Care team at support@bombbomb.com and they'd love to help you order one.
 
5. Using erratic cApITaLiZaTiOn and r@nd*m ch@r@cter$ may look fun, but it won’t help us deliver your mail.
 
Clear and engaging subject lines are your keys to victory here. Additionally, playing with capitalization and symbols will hurt your chances of sailing straight to the inbox. Check out our blog for what kind of text we recommend incorporating into your emails!
 
6. Text-to-image ratio matters a whole lot.
 
The days of sending image- or video-only email are behind us, unfortunately, and we have the spammers to thank for it! While we do (obviously) love putting video in email, it’s important that we add in a few lines of text as well. Most image-only emails will land themselves in a spam filter, so add at least three to five lines of text (per image) into your email. A quick recap of the video you’re sending or maybe an introduction is perfect!