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Avoid spam filters

With highly sensitive spam filters it’s virtually impossible to guarantee that every email you send will reach its intended recipient - regardless of your list's source. This is because firewalls, ISPs and other email virus protection methods have many different criteria for combating illegal spammers, some being more zealous than others.

Spam protection systems often check up on senders by performing a 'reverse look up' to see if the originating server can be identified. Unidentifiable servers, or those with a bad reputation, are frowned upon and are often blocked from entering.

To avoid being blocked by such filters it is often wise to encourage recipients to add you to their address books. Some of the bigger email providers, such as Yahoo, allow users to block by default mail from anybody who isn't on their address book. Many users will simply forget this when they sign up for a mailing, so it's a good idea to remind them in as many ways as possible.

Some useful tips to help avoid being identified as spam are:

• Avoid large graphics, or a high proportion of graphics to recognisable, plain English text that can be scanned by a spam filter.
• Don't use lots of different colours for text and links
• Avoid suspicious subjects. Aside from the obvious, words such as 'free', 'special offer', etc should be avoided as much as possible, as should lots of exclamation marks – spammers do this a lot.

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Work with your recipients' email software

Don't design in isolation. Something that looks fantastic on your screen might not be the most practical solution for a large response. There are two major technical factors that you should consider - both features of the email software your recipients are likely to be using.

Image blocking: this is standard now on Outlook, and many large webmail services such as Gmail. Users with this option selected have to click to display your images. What this means is that if you rely on images alone to display the main points of your communication, then your message will have no initial impact.

By default

With images enabled

You should therefore balance your use of text and graphics, so that those with image blocking enabled are able to see the 'point' of your email. It is likely that image blocking will become more and more common in the future.

By default

With images enabled

A preview pane allows recipients to see a 'snatch' of their email and make a snap decision as to whether it is important or not. Preview panes display the left-hand side or (more commonly) the top few lines of an email. For this reason, you should put important descriptive content in the top left of your email.

Vertical Preview Panel

Horizontal Preview Panel

emailshot allows you to 'test send' as many times as you like, for no charge. Try to test your email on a number of email clients if possible, and don't assume that everybody will be using the same software as you.

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Get read

Email messages are powerful but don’t over estimate how long your recipient will spend reading your text. Make it easy for the recipient to skim-read, use powerful graphics and snap shots of larger articles that the reader can click on a link to the full article if they are interested. A well-written email with the correct balance of graphics and text and carefully placed links is more likely to reach the intended recipient and deliver your message effectively.

Consider the right time to send - will your customers be busy on Monday morning? Will they be in the right frame of mind on Friday afternoon? Experiment. Split your list into two and compare the response to different wording, designs, or campaigns sent at alternative times of day.