With spammers making life increasingly difficult for serious marketers, it takes great effort to keep your email newsletter from getting blocked, filtered or blacklisted. To increase deliverability, each aspect of your email should be thoroughly checked, so that it passes-through even the strictest of spam checkers.
The major elements that need to be attended to are:
- Content
- HTML coding
- Template
- IP address and domain name
- Browser/mailbox compatibility
- CAN SPAM compliance
1. Content
Your content should be able to provide requisite information and at the same time avoid major spam words. If you search for spam words on the net, you’ll find that the list in un-ending. This makes the task of writing effective content a bit tricky, but not impossible. The easy way out is to tone down your content.
Here’s what you can do:
- Moderate the use of hard-selling words like – free, sale, offer, powerful, etc.
- Do not use exclamation marks
- Do not capitalize excessively
- Do not write any adult-oriented content
- Run your content through any of the free spam content checkers available on the net
- Replace sensitive words with synonyms or try different techniques to change the word (e.g., sale = s@le)
- Finally, if you must, put sensitive words in image format instead of text as images can’t be read by spam checkers
2. HTML coding
Broken code is a major spam indicator. All spam filter programs look for it. The problem could be as small as forgetting a closing symbol, such as ">," or using an outdated tag, such as <tbody>. Spam filters also spam messages with JavaScript, VBScripts, CSS, etc., so it is advisable to use simple HTML format. There are free HTML code validators available online – remove all images and variable content, and run your code through an HTML validator to correct errors.
3. Template
An effective design template can boost deliverability and response rates of an email newsletter or campaign. Your message should be crafted for the inbox of the recipient. The reader decides to open or delete the message based on the elements he sees in the preview pane, which is roughly about 5 inches wide and 3 inches deep. The most important features of your newsletter should come within this space. Do not use too many images in the template. Give all links in text format and provide descriptive alt tags for all images.
4. IP address and domain name
If people had reported your earlier email as spam, then your IP address or domain name may get blacklisted. Check with major spam filters for this and submit your request for getting your IP address/domain name re-activated. Alternatively, use different IPs or domain names for each mass mailing exercise. Many ISPs provide dynamic IPs for this purpose.
5. Browser/mailbox compatibility
Easy way to test if your message is getting spammed or appearing correctly is to send it to yourself on various e-mail clients, such as Yahoo, AOL, Gmail, and Hotmail. These email service providers have extensive spam filters for which reports are collected from all over the world. You can also see how will it look in the mailbox of a recipient. Also view your message in different browsers such as, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Opera, etc., and platforms such as PC, Macintosh, Blackberry, PDA, etc. After correcting all the problems identified, run through this diagnostic process again to double check.
6. CAN SPAM compliance
Every e-mail message, whether newsletters, offers, confirmations, or bulletins, must have these elements:
- Link to the web version
- Working opt-out link
- Company name and physical address
- Recipient's e-mail address
- Link to preference-update page
- Working "contact us" link or phone number
Make it easier for your recipient and put all of these together at the bottom of your mail message.
Once, your email campaign is bounce-proofed, it is sure to generate more results. Keep a track of response rates through email campaign trackers, so that you will know the exact improvement. | 
