Xpert Auction Software

Before sending email to your newsletter list or users, read this and follow the guidelines:

Try to send fewer higher quality newsletters so that your customers don't just delete your emails, or worse, mark them as SPAM. Put yourself in your customer's shoes; How many email newsletters would you want to read every week?

With email, things don't happen overnight, and magic wands are few and far between. So for the most part, the actions of your recipients are the highest voice of authority.

Encouraging your recipients to do certain things can help bolster the trust ISPs have for you and your messages. Some examples can include:

• "Add us to your address book!" - Having a recipient add your from address to their address book or trusted senders list can go a long way. More often than not, if one of an ISPs recipients trust a sender, they will be more lenient to similar messages to different recipients.
• Star or Mark as important - A simple inbox action like this is just another way your recipients can tell their mail providers that "Hey, I want these messages".
• "If you don't receive an email right away, please check your spam folder and mark "not spam" - Adding this simple sentence to your sign-up form area can solve a lot of potential heartache. If a message you sent ends up in the Spam folder, and the recipient manually goes in and pulls it out, that's fantastic! This not only helps an ISPs incoming mail filters in avoiding false positives, but also improves your standing with that ISP.

The second biggest factor in inbox delivery is the actual content you send in your messages. It's very important to ensure your emails meet every CAN-SPAM requirement.

Some key takeaways from CAN-SPAM:

• Don't deceive your recipients. Be up front with who you are and what kind of messages you are sending.
• Provide your recipients with a way to opt-out of messages.

Read the full CAN-SPAM Act here! This is required reading for any aspiring email acolyte.

One of the most important parts of CAN-SPAM is this line:

"Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you."

All email providers look for an unsubscribe method (or links) in all emails. Even though it may not make sense for transactional mail, it can make the difference between messages arriving in the inbox or the spam folder. Subscription tracking automatically inserts an unsubscribe link into all your emails and maintains the Unsubscribe list.

Think of it this way: would you rather a recipient politely decline future emails from you or mark your messages as spam because they have no other option?

Maximum company visibility helps as well. Placing your company name in the subject line of your emails and including your physical mailing address and phone number in your email footers helps mail providers recognize you as a legitimate company and email sender. This also helps your recipients know that this message is indeed from you!

We've all ignored phone calls from numbers we don't recognize, the same goes for email!