Know what drives me up the frickin wall? Yahoo email, for one thing.
Even if I send an email to MYSELF, it goes into my spam folder half the time. And the real spam emails go into my inbox. And the non-spam goes into the spam folder. Even though Yahoo’s trying to help, they often cause more frustration than anything else.
I’m not sure the problem’s limited to Yahoo. I’ve heard the same story from people about gmail, msn, hotmail and others. In any case, this teaches us we can’t take anything for granted when sending emails.
If you’re an email marketer, your first goal used to be getting your email opened in the first place. Now it’s for the darn thing to go into the recipient’s inbox for goodness sake.
There’s a few things you can do so your email doesn’t trigger spam filters. Avoiding excessive capital letters, special characters (like $ signs), and exclamation points within your subject line is a good start. According to iContact, staying away from the following words and phrases in your subject line are a good idea, too:
- Free
- Act Now
- All New
- 50% Off
- Call Now
- Subscribe Now
- Earn Money
- Discount
- Double Your Income
- You’re A Winner!
- Million Dollar Opportunity
- Compare
- Removes
- Collect
- Amazing
- Cash Bonus
- Promise You Credit
- Loans
- As Seen On
- Buy Direct
- Get Paid
- Order Now
- Please Read
- Don’t Delete
- Time Limited
- While Supplies Last
- Why Pay More
- Special Promotion
- Information You Requested
- Stop
- No Cost
- No Fees
- Satisfaction Guaranteed
- Serious Cash
- Search Engine Listings
- Join
- Millions Save Up To
- All Natural
- You’ve Been Selected
- Excessive
- $ or !
Just using one or two of these words or phrases in your subject line may not affect whether your email gets seen as junk by the recpient’s email client. But if you use them excessively, you’re screwed.
