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There are many factors that decide wheather a contact will receive your message or not. I get asked quite frequently "What can I do to increase those chances?" The answer is not always clear and I find this to be the most struggling issue to face when it comes to email marketing.
As I know for a fact I am not alone in this struggle, I have created this "cheat sheet" that includes some steps you and your receivers may take to increase the likelyhood of your messages getting past the junk mail filter.
The following are factors that may increase your chances of being considered SPAM.
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Lists that are not clean. The more fails you have in a send, the more likely you will be considered SPAM by some servers. Try to keep your lists as clean as possible. Each time you send out a message, take a look at the fails. If the error message is something like "account does not exist", remove that person from your mailing list.
You can also do an Advanced Search in the Contacts tab for contacts who have over a certain amount of fails. I suggest you do this regularly and remove addresses that are no longer valid.
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Using words like win, winner, free, cash or money
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Having a subject line that is ALL CAPS
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Using symbols like #$&* in your subject line
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Sending a message composed of HTML - which in our case is the biggest challenge as DriveIt uses HTML to create those beautiful message plain text is not capable of. If you have a group of recipients who's server will not allow HTML, you may just have to create plain text messages in DriveIt and send to these people seperately.
Click here to view the Microsoft Junk Email Filter Readme for more things to avoid.
As some of us have learned the hard way, there is only so much YOU can do.
You may find that once you do all you can to avoid being a spammer, you still hear from clients "I did not receive that message". If the message is said to have been received by this person in DriveIt, when in fact they did not, it means the message was blocked - either because of the server junk mail settings, or their own junk mail settings in their email application.
Below are some things the message receiver can do.
SERVER SETTINGS
Of course, not all people are able to adjust the server they rely on. Contacts that use Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail etc. do not have control over the server settings. In this case, you will want to ensure you are taking the appropriate SPAM avoidance precautions discussed above and have the contact adjust their personal settings.
Because all DriveIt messages are sent from the above server/IP addresses, the quantity of sends delivered is high. This makes us more likely to be considered SPAM. We are working on verifying the DriveIt servers with these email providers.
PERSONAL SETTINGS
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First and foremost, have your receivers fully subscribe themselves to your mailing list(s). Send them to your Subscribe Page. If you have contacts who are pending confirmation or unconfirmed, send the Permission Request Header with each message. This will give them the chance to fully subscribe. You may even want to express the importance of this to your contacts in a message.
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Have your receivers allow your send from email address to their address book, or allowed senders list. This, of course, will have to be done for every send from email address you use.
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