You’re spending a lot of time each week crafting emails to your subscribers, but none of that will do you any good if you don’t have a good delivery rate. If those emails land in your potential customers’ spam folders, you don’t have much of a chance of making a sale or building a relationship with them. Here are three tips that will help insure that your emails make it the inbox.
Use A Reputable Autoresponder Service
Using a reputable autoresponder service is the single best thing you can do to improve your chances of avoiding spam folders. Companies like Aweber, Mail Chimp and Constant Contact work hard at making sure they are white listed with some of the larger Internet Service Providers and email providers like Gmail.
Most autoresponder companies provide a way for you to look at reports of their delivery stats. In addition the good ones will make sure your emails are compliant can spam laws and keep you out of hot water.
Set Expectations and Keep Them
Your chances of staying in the main inbox are high when your subscribers regularly open your email. The best way to insure that – outside of providing great content that your subscribers are looking for – is to set expectations from the beginning. Let your subscribers know early on when and how often they can expect an email from you.
You can even use “foreshadowing” in your messages. For example, toward the end of your current email, mention that they can look for another email from you next Tuesday.
Once you’ve set those expectations do what you can to meet them. Yes, things happen every once in a while. In general though, do your best to keep your promise and email when your readers expect it.
Doing this regularly will improve your open rates and thus your overall deliverability.
Clean Up Your List Regularly
Another good habit is to clean up your list regularly. If subscribers haven’t been opening your emails for the past six month, chances are good they are no longer interested in what you have to offer.
You can unsubscribe those who are not opening you emails every six months or if your business is more seasonal, a yearly clean up might work better. Either way you should determine what schedule works best for your business, every six months or yearly, and make it part of your business routine.
Following these tips and keeping an eye on email deliverability in general will make sure your emails are being read by your subscribers and that’s the point of email marketing, isn’t it?