A common complaint if you’ve been doing business online for any length of time is how to ensure that messages are actually being read.  I don’t have any hard statistics but my gut tells me (and my eyes tell me when I look at my own campaign stats or the stats of my clients’ e-mail campaigns) that about 1% of the messages being sent bounce because the e-mail you have is no longer valid and about 25% to 30% of your messages are being opened.  Now I know I majored in music in high school and University but even my math tells me that there’s a whopping 70-75% of messages missing in action.

Turns out, being able to get e-mails read by your prospects and customers has become a real challenge.  So if you’re relying on e-mail as your primary method of communication with your followers, you really can’t count on e-mail being a reliable method of communication.

As you can see by the brief example above, a large percentage of every e-mail you send will not find its way to your followers.  Chances are it could be found in their junk mail or spam folder but it may not hit their inbox.  Some e-mails never even make it to that far, as they’re tagged at the ISP (Internet Service Provider) level as and caught in their own spam or block filters.  Even if your message does manage to reach your follower, there’s no guarantee that it will be read, and even less will be acted upon.

Avoid the Junk Mail Folder

Here are my top three tips and tricks that will increase your chances of getting e-mail through to your followers:

1) Avoid HTML e-mails: If you use a list management program like aWeber or 1ShoppingCart, you’ll be able to run your broadcast through their spam filters and receive an indication of the likelihood that your e-mail will be tagged as spam.  One of the most common triggers they check for is whether or not you’re sending a fully formatted HTML e-mail.  I believe most spam checkers rank on a scale of 1 to 5 and many of the HTML formatted e-mails I’ve seen rank around 1.2 and anything less than 2 has a high chance of success but since we’re examining factors that could increase the likelihood of your message being tagged as spam, then HTML formatted e-mails is definitely a factor.  But it’s one worth the risk because HTML e-mails tend to get a better response from your reader in terms of actual clicks.

2) Avoid Spam Triggers: Spam filters generally examine e-mail content, so the words used in the body of the e-mail itself.  Words like “free” and “contest” and “win” or even “money” are common spam triggers.  It’s not that you can’t use the word “free” in your e-mail campaigns, but that you shouldn’t use it in combination with other words that are often used by real spammers.  While it’s not possible to keep up with all of the words that are categorized as spam triggers (and the list grows by leaps and bounds from week to week), you can be smart about how you choose to use those words in your message.  Even if your message is clear of all trigger words, there are a few other grammatical conventions to avoid in your e-mail campaigns. The excessive use of exclamation points is a big no-no, especially using an exclamation point in your subject line.  Also, its good to avoid using CAPITAL LETTERS for words, especially words like FREE! 🙂  If you want to emphasize a word, you can put it in-between *asterisks*, instead of using capital letters.

3) Teach Your Tribe to Whitelist You: One of the most important factors in avoiding the junk mail folder is to teach your tribe to add your e-mail address to their address book.  Once they’ve done that, their e-mail program views your e-mails as safe and you have a better chance of being routed to their inbox rather than their junk mail folder.  Give your tribe instructions on how to whitelist you as part of the opt-in process.  As soon as they’ve given you their name and e-mail address, you can redirect them to a confirmation page that will instruct your new reader that they need to confirm their subscription and offer instructions no how to whitelist your address.

Share your experience…

If you have any of your own strategies to share or a confirmation page that has been working well for you, let me know by writing in the comment area below.  Have you taught your tribe how to whitelist you?  Do you have a great read rate with a particular autoresponder service?  Share your experience by posting a comment in the comment area below.