Top 10 Home Business Opportunities - How to Avoid Spam Filters

Spam filters are the scourge of many a campaign, for marketers who send emails on a regular basis.

But even permission-based emails can get filtered out of in-boxes as spam, not only do an average 10 to 20% of emails sent become victims of spam blocker software.

Understanding how spam filters work seems to be the only way to take on the software and get your message to your intended audience.

How Spam Filters Work

Essentially a spam filter is a tool for quickly checking an email against a set list of criteria to decide if it is spam or not.

Some criteria are awarded more points than others. Points are given each time one of these phrases occurs. "WHY PAY MORE" or "BUY NOW", "CLICK HERE", one of the criteria might be a phrase such as "FREE".

If your email campaign's total point score reaches or exceeds a set threshold your email is automatically classed as spam and gets quarantined.

How high or how low spam tolerance is set depends on the software being used and the person who sets it up. The problem for the marketer is that rules for awarding points and thresholds are not uniform.

Some spam filters even compare and synchronise criteria on-line. This is an on-going learning curve as spam filters are continuously updating their spam criteria whenever someone clicks on the "this is spam" button. The best way to ensure your email gets through is to keep an eye on spam criteria and make sure your campaign removes as many of these as possible.

They deal with marketing emails every day and keep abreast of the latest developments in spam blocking technologies. A professional email broadcaster can help you, if all this sounds too much to handle.

10 Top Tips for Beating Spam Filters

In the meantime here are our top 10 tips to help your email marketing campaigns beat the spam blockers.

Do some background research to find out how they keep their lists up to date and compliant with legal obligations like the preference services and EuroCAUCE. Rent only clean lists from reputable email list brokers. 1.

Useful and legally compliant, data cleansing and list management is another job a professional list broker can help you with to make sure your list remains current. Bounced emails and that it complies with privacy and preference legislation, this has to be updated regularly to make sure it takes into account unsubscribe requests, if you are using your own list. 2.

It's very likely your email will end up in the junk mail folder, if they don't recognise you. Individual's prefer to receive emails from a name they recognise and trust. Avoid using symbols and numbers in your "From" name field. Send messages from a real name. 3.

Avoid buzzwords and overused marketing phrases like "while stocks last" or "last week of sale". Keep excessive punctuation out of this field as well as the use of ALL CAPS. Don't try to be over complicated or over personal in your subject line. Is there a particular customer benefit or solution that would make a great headline. Instead be clear about what your email is about, "buy now" and "win", avoid recognised spam words and phrases like "free". Keep your subject lines simple. 4.

Include details of benefits and offers and end with a clear call to action, say what you want to say. Don't fill it with marketing jargon and unnecessary padding. Keep the main body of email text clear and to the point. 5.

It's also useful to send your email to various email accounts with different protection settings. Aim to run a test of different email systems and email programmes to flush out any problems. Test and test again before sending your email, test. 6.

Very small fonts are flagged up by spam filters as a sign that the sender is attempting to embed content or other other harmful elements in a message. Use a normal font size. 7.

Spam filters can't read images and may automatically assume they are spam. Avoid using lots of images. 8.

Talk to reputable email list broker for advice, if you have problems de-duplicating your lists. Don't send multiple copies of an email to the same address. 9.

Like a high number of bounce backs, getting on the list is usually down to feedback and complaints received from ISP subscribers as well as evidence of bad emailing practice. Blacklists of known spam offenders are blocked by ISPs. Be aware of blacklists. 10.

You could also investigate the procedure for getting accepted onto ISP whitelists as an identified good sender. The best way to avoid blacklists is to ensure you adhere to email best practice and adopt an ongoing email testing process to catch problems early.