Because of the problem of spam emails most email clients provide some type of spam filtering. These filters use various techniques, such as Bayesian filters and black lists, to mark emails as spam and move them automatically into a spam folder or even simply delete them. Since you spend a lot of time building your opt-in email marketing list, preparing newsletters and managing autoresponders you don’t want your hard work to go to waste due to filtering. So, what can you do about it?
One way to avoid this problem is to educate your subscribers. When someone signs up for you autoresponder or opt-in email list redirect them to a page where you can give them instructions on how to ‘white list’ your emails. Almost all email clients maintain a list of permitted email addresses where the owner of the account can indicate that specific addresses that should never be considered spam. All you need to do is provide a short and to the point article on how to permit your emails past the spam filter.
Another good way to prevent this problem is to use a double opt-in system where the subscriber has to respond to an initial email in order to subscribe to the list. This serves as a test run of the autoresponder system and emails you have in place and gives the subscriber a chance to place your email address on the white list if it gets marked as spam the first time through. The potential subscriber will be motivated to deal with the problem at this point where they won’t be as motivated at a later time in most cases.
A good, proactive, way to insure that your emails are not being marked as spam is to run your emails through various online spam checkers and popular free email services. Just setup your own test accounts and send test emails as well as you regular marketing emails to them. This will let you know if your emails pass muster. This will allow you to check your marketing emails for key words and phrases that commonly trigger a spam alert by common email clients. By doing this spam check ahead of time you will be able to avoid having emails sent to your opt-in list from being sent to the spam filter and thus, never read by the intended recipients.
