How not to fall into spam: 10 tips

Whether you use emails for prospecting, or simply to run your business, ensuring that your emails are well received and read is essential.

An email that falls into spam can very quickly cost you an opportunity, a customer, or a lot of waiting time at an appointment where no one will come...

But rest assured, at the end of this article, you will be a delivery-jedi ⚔️ And you will have all the keys to make spam a distant memory 😏

What is SPAM exactly?

Before talking about techniques for not to fall into spam, it is important to understand what exactly SPAM is and how it is identified.

So what is SPAM?

SPAM is an unwanted message (generally of an advertising nature), sent by e-mail in a massive manner, and without having obtained the prior consent of the recipients.

It is not necessarily a fraudulent or malicious approach, but it will always be annoying.

The origin of the word SPAM dates back to the 16th century, during the golden age of piracy. The term would thus be the acronym for”Sacrifice of a dying and miserable pirate“.

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Doubtful? 😂 Wait until you see the true origin of the word SPAM 👇

SPAM comes from the contraction of the American brand “Spiced HaM”, registered by the company Hormel Foods in 1937. Now you say to yourself, this cat is still walking me around! Well not at all 🤓.

The origin of the use of the word SPAM dates back to a Monty Python sketch from 1970.
In this skit, we find a group of tavern customers dressed as Vikings loudly declaring that everyone should eat SPAM, whether they want to or not.

The term will be retained by the computer community, having fun flooding chats, groups and others with the word SPAM repeated hundreds of times, for the sole purpose of annoying other users.

This is where the idea of incessant and forced repetition interfering with messaging comes from.

So here it is, the very first SPAM, and we can eat it! 👨🍳👇

Now that you know its particular origin, it's time to get back to our email story.

Spam identification

Email spam can be identified in two ways:

• Be automaticallyt, by the email reception server (Gmail, OVH, OVH, Yahoo, Yahoo, Yahoo, Orange, SFR,...) or by your mailbox (Mail, Outlook,...) automatically marking certain emails as junk based on anti-spam filters.
• Either manually, by the user who moves an email into his spam folder, which sends the information back to the receiving server and to the mailboxes in order to improve the quality of anti-spam filters.

Spam & Deliverability

A good deliverability of your emails will allow them to reach your recipient's inbox. Conversely, poor deliverability will cause your sent emails to end up in your recipient's spam folder or even be blocked earlier in the process by the receiving server.

Spam and deliverability is a bit like an endless fight between Anakin & Obiwan. Mastering how not to fall into spam requires constant effort, because it will never be taken for granted, but if you do it right, the light will win!

How to boost its deliverability?

The technical configuration of your email

The first essential thing to improve your deliverability will be to correctly configure your email address. This is done at the level of your DNS zone of your domain name. Yes, since your professional email certainly has the form tonnom@taboite.com, e-mails are managed directly from the server linked to your domain name (taboite.com).

The DNS zone (Domain Name System) is what organizes the different areas of your domain, such as sub-domains (e.g.: sub.taboite.com) or the location of your email server.

If you have a pro address, you have an MX record in the DNS zone of your website.

That's already good, but if you want to do some prospecting, you'll have to level up. 💪

You will have to manage a few new fields within your DNS zone. 🤓

The reason is this; when the email sending protocol (hello SMTP 👋 or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, not to mention it) was originally developed, it was not developed in order to be protected or locked.

Since then, email has become highly democratized. With nearly 320 billion emails sent daily around the world, you can imagine that we had to add some standards to manage all this. These standards are as follows:

• The SPF (Sender Policy Framework), a standard for verifying the domain name of the sender of an email. Basically, the SPF ensures that your email started from an IP address linked to your domain name, and that it therefore came from you.

• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), This is an encrypted signature (with a public and private key), which ensures that the message will not be intercepted or modified upon delivery and that the message actually comes from the recipient (the “From” header that informs the sender of the email). The verification of DKIM signatures is done automatically at the server level.

• The last one, the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) also allows email author authentication and is built on the previous two, namely SPF and DKIM. Its purpose is to protect a domain name so that it cannot be used by an unauthorized user (also known as Spoofing)

Configuring these 3 elements will be essential to protect your email domain as well as greatly improve your deliverability.

You could say that the combination of the 3 is like a kind of car license for your emails, it identifies them and allows you to easily go everywhere. They become the kings of the road, and arrive in the inbox before the scheduled time on the GPS 😎.

If you want to implement them directly for your email box, we have prepared a dedicated article on the implementation of SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

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Warm up your email address and have a good (domain) reputation

Imagine having to run a marathon in a month. It would seem logical to you to train by then by increasing the pace little by little, right?

For your email address (and your sending IP address), it's the same thing.

Luckily, in the case of your email, you don't have to run to get to the level 🏃♂️

When you send emails from a new email address, with a new IP address, you're a bit of a 'new kid in ton'. When your IP address starts, it will first have to prove itself to various email providers (such as Gmail, Yahoo, Ovh,...) before it can send high volumes. This is also the case if you send a “classic” quantity on a daily basis and suddenly you suddenly increase the pace (by starting to prospect for example), this sends a bad signal to the servers, which will increase your probability that your domain reputation will be affected, and that therefore your deliverability will be damaged.

Fortunately, it's not that complicated to build a good reputation (also called Sender-Score) with email providers. All you need to do is “heat up” your email address gradually, to allow it to increase sending volumes.

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⚠️ Note that if you stop the email sending process for several months, you'll have to start all over again, much like the marathon runner who stopped running years ago. Your reputation score should be continuously maintained ✌️

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Fortunately, it is not necessary to do everything by hand, you can use dedicated services that will automatically warm your email address, such as Lemwarm (https://www.lemwarm.co/), you will only have to see your Sender Score increase, and your deliverability improve. 💪

PS: a little advice if you are just starting out, warm up your email address over a minimum period of 4 weeks of continuous sending with a gradual daily increase before starting prospecting. Once these first 4 weeks have passed, keep up a steady pace to maintain a good domain reputation. That way, you'll stay with a VIM (Very Important Mail) reputation 😎

Skip the spam filters

Spam filters evaluate each of your emails according to a multitude of criteria.

Based on these criteria, a score is established, if it is too high, your email will be considered spam. As you will have understood, the objective will therefore be to look as little as possible like spam to pass the filters without getting arrested.

Spam filters are getting smarter, so there is no binary rule for ending up in spam or not, the context will be taken into account. But avoiding certain approaches will benefit you for your deliverability.

Here are some essential practices for going incognito by spam filters, even with a large volume of emails sent:

Take care of your object & sender name

The first thing your recipient will see from your email will be the name (the “From”), as well as the subject of your email. On some messages it will also have a glimpse of your first words. These are therefore 3 elements to take good care of:

1. An authentic sender name 👌

Use your name, the name of your company, or a combination of both. Don't change the sender name regularly, spammers tend to change it to trick their targets, so stay consistent and authentic.

2. An email subject without “spammy” words 👀

Avoid “click bait” tricks to push people to open the email. Your email subject must be in line with the content of the email, otherwise it will be opened but not read. Also avoid using a spammy vocubular. Here are a few examples to avoid:

Free, promo, urgent, 50%, 100% free, 100% free, win, €, Double your income, refund, Special promotion,...

3. Avoid capitalization or repeated exclamation points in the object 🙅

IT QUICKLY GETS SPAM, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN??!!!!!!

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If you write a qualitative and authentic email, you shouldn't have too much trouble at this level.

Take care of the content of your email

Now let's get to the heart of the email, here are the elements to take good care of so as not to affect your deliverability:

1. Don't use a big image for your email content 🖼️

An informational or prospecting email is not a newsletter, don't try to send an email that looks like a Photoshop job. Spam filters don't know how to read images, so this will increase the likelihood of ending up in spam enormously. So focus on the right emailing tools to write a qualitative text email.

2. Keep an image to text ratio low ➗

As mentioned above, filters don't like images because they can't read the content. If you still want to use them, do it in a minimalist way, and add an ALT text (alternative text to give information about the content of the image) for each one.

3. Stay sober in your fitness 🦩

The aim is to stay in the most natural exchange behavior possible, so avoid using too much bold, color, italics, underline or uppercase letters, or a combination in your text. Filters don't like it.

4. Avoid attachments 📎

When you use email, with a large volume of sending, it is not recommended to put attachments in your emails. This behavior is very frowned upon by filters, because viruses are typically transmitted in this way.

PS: If document transfer is essential, consider putting a URL link to a Dropbox or a drive containing it.

5. Use a clean HTML code 🛠 (for techies 🤓)

It is essential that the receiving server and email services can read your email effectively. It is therefore important to respect HTML standards for e-mailing. This type of problem mainly applies to Newsletters (such as Mailchimp, SendinBlue, Mailjet,...) and not to prospecting.

To avoid any form problems with your prospecting emails, focus on a purely textual email, and do not copy emails from another environment (e.g. Word to email) to be sure not to keep an unsuitable source formatting code.

6. Remember to add an unsubscribe link 🔕

For prospecting, it is advisable to add an unsubscribe link to the emails sent. This may make your email less “natural”, but it will allow it to maintain better deliverability. An email without an unsubscribe link will be considered suspicious by spam filters.

Conclusion

Each of the steps presented in this article will help you improve your deliverability and no longer end up in the spam folder of your recipients. Obviously, the need for attention to your deliverability, and the efforts to be made to keep a good one will be linked to your sending volume.

If you just want your emails not to fall into spam from your customers or suppliers, setting up your DKIM, SPF, and DMARC should do more than the trick.

The more you use your emails for prospecting purposes, the more attention you should pay to the various elements that allow you to maintain a good domain reputation.

It's up to you to test your email score 💯

Before you let go, here are two tools that will be very useful for you to estimate the current quality of your emails, and the work you will need to have optimal deliverability:

👉 Mailreach Spam Test to test for free if your emails arrive in SPAM depending on the type of receiving server.

And

👉 Mail Tester to know the score of your email address.

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You now have all the keys in hand to stop falling into spam 😎

“May the delivery be with you”

Congratulations, you are now a Jedi deliverability master!

Use force wisely ⚡️

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