Before you send a batch email, action plan email, or 1:1 email, take note of the following best practices.
Avoid spam-like content
Spam filters are constantly evolving and while it is impossible to know what all factors will be applied to your email, there are some best practices to follow and mistakes to avoid.
Spam filters look for particular content, so make sure to avoid using all capital letters, too many exclamation marks, and spam-like words or phrases ("click now!", "hottest", "limited time offer!" etc).
For subjects, add personalization with merge fields and be careful of overusing emojis. Don't use deceptive subject lines such as "RE: Hello" when it is not a true reply. Keep subjects simple and to the point.
For your body content, make sure all links are valid and avoid link shorteners; avoid excessive links and images
Text-to-Image Ratio
If you include images (it can be better for spam filters to not include images at all), do not send any image-only emails, and include at least two lines of text for every image.
Test Email Content
Before you send a batch email, be sure to test your content so you don't send emails with broken links or images.
Use Reports to Steer Future Emails
By viewing the click, open, reply, and unsubscribe rates of previous batch emails, you can gain knowledge of what kind of content is successful and what to avoid for future content.
Get Off Blacklists
If your email server is on a blacklist, it becomes extremely difficult to reliably send emails.
The first step is to check if your email server is on a blacklist. Following are a few free services:
If you find that you are on a blacklist, you will need to follow up with the website that has added you to their blacklist. That information is provided by the tools listed above.
Signature Content
Keep your signature simple with a good text-to-image ratio. We highly recommend importing your signature or adding your signature's HTML code directly into Follow Up Boss. Here is more information about Editing your Signature.