Business Website Advice

The nightmare of anyone putting in the time and effort to write an e-newsletter is having it erroneously end up in the Spam folder. It can be so frustrating.

Often it’s due to user error. We’ve used trigger words or formatting techniques that activate filters. Let the pros remind you of what to avoid and some truths on who is responsible.

To begin. I use Wordpress so can’t complain. I use the post notification plugin for Wordpress CMS blogs (websites), so sending e-newsletters is a dream. The servers and ISPs recognise the WP mail and give it a green light. The bad guys use the old stuff, not blog software. That’s one major advantage of migrating to Web 2.0. Only when I do something sloppy like use several links in the top few lines do I end up with one of my post alerts in my spam folder. Again, see it’s user error.

Now, how to avoid spam filters.

Shoutpoint, a New Zealand email newsletter service provider,  points out things to avoid when writing your newsletters. While 7 suggestions are made, what I see most often in my Spam folder are from, of all places, government departments that format with:

1. subject line confusion.  All caps, blank or spelling errors. Besides looking amateurish, all caps and spelling errors or symbols look like a spam machine has been busy all night so triggers the filters.
   Solution: revert to normal and be descriptive. See any auto generating subject line to enable a summary of what’s in the newsletter. Remember so many readers file your newsletters to read later. They don’t have time now but will read them on the weekend or next month or while on holiday. How enticing is it to have a long list of emails with your company name or a number only in the subject line. Blah.  That’s too common to believe. Don’t accept the tech people telling you it can’t be customised. Yes it can but it takes effort.
2. all caps as headings or to divide sections of the newsletter. They want emails to look good for those with plain text only. Plain text is last century.  (oops, almost demo-ed it which would have run the risk of getting this filtered out. That’s how dumb mistakes happen).
   Solution: Turn on Bold for headings. Avoid all caps anywhere. It works so much better for the human reader and lets you by the filters.
3. Too many images without much text.  You think the picture says it all. Wrong. You need more words, not just images.  Solution:  keep it in mind, say more.

Their other suggestions are worth looking at.

Finger pointing. Who is to blame on filtered out newsletters?  Seems convenient to blame the other guy.  Everyone always points to the receiving ISP.  Think again.

Shoutpoint makes this interesting argument.  Some servers are whitelisted by some ISP’s including AOL Yahoo and are recognised by Hotmail and MSN.   This means they’re a trusted source.  Point being: your sending server has a role.  You can read about blacklist monitoring.

Also, it is important, and required by law  (and polite business), to have a single-click, unsubscribe link allowing subscribers to remove themselves quickly and easily. 

More about permission based email newsletters in a few weeks.

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