Best Practice: Email Marketing Content

It's hard to write a marketing email! You need to think about reaching the intended audience but also avoid SPAM filters.

Writing the subject line is one of the most stressful steps in email marketing. Is it engaging? Too short? Too long? Will people click the links and take action? Most importantly will the email make it to the intended audience. 

SPAM filters are triggered for many reasons, causing your email not to be delivered to the audience. Below we provide some Best Practices for creating your email content and avoiding the SPAM filters.

Contents

Click on the + to expand the instructions for the desired task.

A Strong Subject Line

Writing a subject line for an email to use in an email marketing campaign can be a daunting task. Is it too long? Too short? Catchy? Too Long? 

• Use a subject line that truthfully describes the content of your email, but keep it brief.

Whitelisting / Safe Sender Lists

Whitelisting and safe sender lists are similar terms that result in allowing email to flow through spam filters to the recipient's email inbox. Safe sender lists target an email address while a whitelist can target an email address or domain. 

• Ask recipients to add your From email address to their contact list. This will help your messages to bypass the filters and land directly in the recipient’s Inbox.
• Encourage recipients to add the From email address to the safe sender list in every email campaign you send out. 
• You can add the marketer to your contacts. You should also consider adding @email.unifyr.com (or @ziftsolutions.com - mature systems may use this address) to your contact lists so that you receive your test emails.

The User Experience

Most readers prefer an uncluttered, organized email. Your email is overwhelming and time-consuming to consume if you have not considered a well-organized layout with an eye for easy reading. Here are some more tips:

• Leave white space and place both written and visual content in the email so that it is easy to navigate.
• Since many recipients will read the email on a mobile device, be sure it is a responsive design.

Call to Action

When you send out marketing emails, you often receive bounce-back messages alerting you to out-of-date email accounts. It is important that you take action and remove any bounced addresses from your mailing lists. 

Complaints, bounces, and unsubscribes all indicate the health and overall quality of a list. They are not only a direct representation of how happy your recipients are in receiving your emails, but they serve as a report card for your email marketing practices as a whole. 

If engaging content is sent regularly to a list of people who are waiting to open the email, these numbers should be 0 (or very close to it). Each complaint or hard bounce generated is a mark against the account. If someone unsubscribes from a list, they are indicating to a sender that the emails sent are no longer of any interest to them. 

You can follow the guidelines below to establish how our Email Service Provider monitors your account: 

• Complaints: Expected results: 0.10% Should never exceed: 0.25%.
• Hard bounces should never exceed 5% Expected results: 0% - 1% Should never exceed: 5%.
• Unsubscribes should never exceed 1%.

Monitor your list for inactive subscribers. You can suppress communications to disinterested/inactive users or create a Do Not Contact list of subscribers who have not opened in 3 months, 6 months, or whatever time frame you are comfortable with. For more information, see Email Suppression.

Image to Text Ratio

Consider the image to text ratio when designing your email will not only enhance the user experience but will also help to avoid poor deliverability. Here are some guidelines:

• A maximum of 40% image coverage. We recommend having several, smaller images with clear, descriptive alternate texts. This will help by:
  • Preventing the email to be flagged as spam
  • Encouraging people to display images (yielding you more accurate reports
  • Help loading time of emails
• A minimum of 60% text coverage
• Not all images touching
• At least 400 characters of text per anti-spam law, all emails must contain some form of text (even if it a simple Good Morning).

SPAM Trigger Words

General
ALL CAPS	Exclamation points !!!!	Any version of Free: Free, Free!, Free gift, Free offer
ACCEPTANCE	AVOID	Chance
Freedom	Gambling-related terms	Here
Home	Leave	Lifetime
Miracle	Never	Passwords
Problem	Remove	Sample
Satisfaction	Solution	Stop
Success
Call-to-Action
Cancel at any time	Compare	Give it away, Give away
Print from signature	Print out	See for yourself
Sign up free today
Numbers
#1	100% FREE	100% Satisfied
50% off	Billion	Join Millions
Million	One hundred percent guaranteed	Thousands
Marketing
AD	AUTO EMAIL REMOVAL	BULK EMAIL
Click	Click below	Click here
Click to remove	Direct email	Direct marketing
Email harvest	Email marketing	Form
Increase sales	Increase traffic	Increase your sales
Internet market	Internet marketing	Marketing
Mass email	Member	Month trial offer
Multi-level marketing	Not spam	Online marketing
Opt in	Performance	Sale
Sales	Search engine	Subscribe
Unsubscribe	Visit our website	Web traffic
Will not believe your eyes

SPAM Trigger Words