The Simple Do’s and Don’ts of Email Marketing.

(Originally posted on Rocket Surgery.)

You probably don’t realize it, but the world is inundated with spam, most of which you never see.

A colleague of ours who runs the mail server for a private university in California estimated several years ago that over 90% of the email that reached his servers was spam. That meant all the messages sent and received by the students, faculty, staff, and affiliates of the university accounted for less than 10% of the total mail exchanged.

The situation globally is a little more positive. As a percentage, the volume of spam has been steadily decreasing since the late 2000s, probably due to the coordinated efforts to control it.

Spam as a Percent of All Email

Email delivery today is entirely reputation-based. Senders are scored by email servers based on configuration and practice. Commit too many infractions, and you’ll find yourself blacklisted, meaning all your well-crafted marketing emails will end up in spam folders—if they’re delivered at all.

Adhering to best practices is relatively easy. While larger marketers with mailing lists in the millions will often hire specialists to squeeze a few more tenths of a percent out of their email deliverability rate, most small to medium-sized businesses should be able to meet their objectives—and avoid the spam folder—by following a few simple guidelines.

Don’t

• Don’t use the CC or BCC lines

• Don’t send attachments

• Don’t use shortened or bad URLs

• Don’t include images over 1 MB

• Don’t send to bad addresses

• Don’t send without consent

• Don’t send too many emails

Do

• Do authenticate your domain

• Do include more text than images

• Do include alt text for images

• Do scrub bounces immediately

• Do engage with segments & topics

• Do include an unsubscribe link

• Do test all your emails first

It may seem like a lot at first, but it really is very simple, especially if you have someone who can walk you through it—or better yet, who can configure an email marketing application like Zoho Campaigns that does most of the work for you.

Zoho Campaigns will:

• Automatically scrub bad email BEFORE sending

• Remove bounces

• Configure a proper header and footer, including unsubscribe link

• Warn you if your images are too large

• Schedule campaigns

• Limit the number of emails any one contact receives

• Automate follow-ups and responses

• Increase engagement with topics and segments

• Automate complex customer journeys

• Integrate with your CRM

• And more!