How to create NON-SPAM emails that get opened and read

Do you use Outlook to send out sales and marketing emails to your customers? Here’s a few tips to help your emails reach customers and not get blocked as SPAM

1. Send SEPERATE INDIVIDUALLY ADDRESSED to each person

Don’t send one email with a big list of recipients… or worse to undisclosed recipients. That’s a red flag to junk mail filter software.

Instead send separate emails so that each recipient should only see their own name in the To field of the email that they receive.

Creating separate emails for each person can take time. If you have a big list of prospects or customers you can use an Outlook addin like Email Merge PRO which will create and send separate emails to each customer.

2. Don’t use words that Spammers use.

This means avoid words like free, discount, guarantee, special offer, best price, bargain etc.

But… how can you sell something without using those word…  use them… but use them once or twice only where it makes sense.

Don’t make your whole email a sales promotion. Spam filters look at how often these trigger words are used so make sure you also have other (relevant) content.

3. Send emails from your own email account.

If you’re using Outlook, you probably don’t need to worry about this one. This applies to people who try and use unknown servers or web services to send out emails.

If the recipient’s ISP detects that your email is coming from an unreliable server or if the email is coming from a different domain then your email will be blocked.

Even when your email has gotten through to the user’s Inboxes, your job is still not done. You still need to get past the main Junk Mail filter… the person reading this email.

1. Make sure that the email is individually addressed (in the To field) only to him (or her).
When I see a big list of recipients from someone who is not a personal friend (I still get some joke emails etc from friends), I assume that someone is trying to sell me something.

2. Personalise the email at the start (something like Dear Sanjay) but don’t get carried away and personalise it too many places.

3. Send the email only to people who are actually interested in what you are writing about selling etc. If you have a big list of people, you may want to segment it into smaller lists. Not everyone is interested in everything you have to offer.

(If you are using Email Merge PRO, you can group your lists into smaller segments directly from the Wizard)

4. Make the Subject line interesting enough that the user wants to open the email.

I hope that these tips help your emails deliver better results for your business.

You may also want to look at Email Merge for Outlook which has an easy-to-use Wizard that helps you send out personalized individually addressed emails. It works from inside Outlook (your recipient list can be inside Outlook or Excel…)  and also has advanced features to help you segment your list etc.