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How to Avoid a Bride's Email Spam Filter?

It can be so frustrating. You follow all of the rules and sometimes your email campaigns still do not reach a percentage of brides’ inboxes. According to MailChimp, “You can expect 10-20% of your emails to just get lost in cyberspace, mostly due to overzealous spam filters.” While there is no quick fix, there are ways that have been proven to help overcome this challenge. Yes, this is another thing to think about when doing wedding marketing but guess what… more brides will get your email messages. This will expand both your relationships and your opportunity to earn more money.

Rule #1: First and foremost, make sure that you aren’t actually spamming your audience. Spam (a.k.a. junk email) involves sending nearly identical email messages to numerous recipients who have not opted-in for this activity. So, take the spam test. Are you importing a purchased list of ANY kind? Are you sending to non-specific addresses such as: sales@domain.com, business@domain.com, webmaster@domain.com, info@domain.com, or other general addresses? Do you have any abuse@, postmaster@, or hostmaster@ domains on your list? Are you sending to distribution lists or mailing lists which send indirectly to a variety of email addresses? Are you mailing to anyone who has not explicitly agreed to join your mailing list?

Rule #2: Don’t use certain trigger words or phrases. This is especially true for your subject line. Don’t use words like free, affordable, all new, no hidden costs, risk free, etc. To help, I recently found a list of 100 words that you should avoid in your subject line.

Rule #3: Don’t use a lot of exclamation points!!!

Rule #4: DON’T use all CAPS.

Rule #5: Don’t use bright red or green for your font colors.

Rule #6: Don’t send just one large image in your email. Spam filters can’t read images and won’t trust your email.

Rule #7: Do use a spam checker. Many of the popular email service providers have this feature embedded in their tool. Before you send out your email, the spam checker can scan your email for things that the spam filters will look for.

These simple rules can save you both time and money. More importantly, they will maximize the value of the bride list that you worked so hard to accumulate. Are there other best practices that you have learned in order to avoid the bride’s spam filter?

About This Blog: Christine Dyer has an MBA in marketing and shares over ten years of marketing expertise with the wedding community. In this weekly blog called Supercharge Your Wedding Business, you'll find advice on an array of wedding business topics such as how to market to brides, social networking, wedding PR, wedding sales, vendor networking, branding, pricing and much more. .Please pass this news along to your own professional wedding network. To receive this advice in your email inbox each week, Sign Up for a Free BridalTweet Membership.

Tags: bridaltweet, email marketing, marketing to brides, wedding marketing

Comment by Roberta Crumplin on October 20, 2009 at 4:31am: Thanks for the post Christine - there were quite a few pointers here that I wasn't aware of!

Comment by Lynn Dula on October 20, 2009 at 8:41am: This is great information!

Comment by Moshe Mikanovsky on October 20, 2009 at 11:51am: Well written! I was thinking about this issue in the last few days, since I tried putting in order my distribution list, and I sent an email to all my family and friends. The % of people who replied back was so low, that I only tend to believe most of them got the email to their spam folder. The main problem is that I followed the above rules quite to the dot (excluding number 7 that I have to check if I have!).
Would love to hear more from other people about their experience.

Comment by John Wiley on October 20, 2009 at 1:28pm: Thanks Christine! Good info that we all need to be reminded of now & then.

Comment by Survive Wedding Season on October 20, 2009 at 7:22pm: This is a really useful post. Thank you, Liuba

Survive Wedding Season

Comment by A Divine Affair -Coordinator on October 21, 2009 at 8:02am: Great advise Christine

Comment by Carol J. Merletti on October 21, 2009 at 10:38pm: Thank you for these very helpful tips!

Comment by Jack Corns on October 22, 2009 at 7:59pm: Thank you for the tips

Comment by Erez Avraham on October 26, 2009 at 12:10pm: great article , thanks for the tips. i try to use my bulk email sender directly from the shopping cart interface of my website and it seems to work most of the time

Comment by JR Jewelers Store on November 4, 2009 at 5:19am: Thanks for the helpful tips. I would love to read more applicable advice and can hardly wait for your next posts