Avoiding spam reports

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on August 03, 2007

Two quick articles skittered across my desktop this morning, both addressing the possibility that people are marking your emails as spam. Even though they gave you permission to send them.

Carolyn Gardner points out that people sometimes switch email marketing services to improve their deliverability.

Yippee: more people get your emails...suddenly, out of the blue, after signing up months or years previously. Carolyn suggests how you might prevent these folk from labeling your emails as spam as a result.

You might also argue that if they haven't seen your emails before, then that initial permission (opt-in) is no longer valid. That's the approach I took when switching list hosts.

What I did was to first identify active subscribers (defined as people who clicked on at least one email in the past 45 days) and transfer them across to the new service.

Then I used the old host to continue mailing inactives for a further six weeks. A few people clicked, and they were then switched across to the new service.

Then I sent a simple text-only email to the remaining inactives inviting them to rekindle their interest and recommit to getting the newsletter.

Anyone who didn't respond never got switched to the new system and I stopped mailing them.

In retrospect, I should have given them more chance to respond. And there are alternative approaches to this whole transfer and re-engagement process (see Carolyn's suggestions, for example.) But I felt this way maintained the highest permission standards.

Meanwhile, Dave Lewis answers the question, "I've been getting spam complaints from customers who have previously opted into receiving my email. Why don't they just opt out?" And includes a few tips on avoiding that particular fate.

More on email deliverability | Tags: email marketing, deliverability, spam, anti-spam

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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2 Comments:

Mark -

I read (and commented on) Carolyn's post. I like your example of how you "made the ESP switch" but keep coming back to...

"Wow. What a tedious process."

There has to be a better way, right?

dj at bronto
By DJ Waldow, on 03 August, 2007

Yep. As an Asian philosopher probably once said, "there is always a better way. But can you find it?"
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on 04 August, 2007