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Tips for Keeping Your Sales Emails out of the Spam Folder · Master The Inbox

• 0:00
  Monica, I heard that if you send sales emails, you're going to trigger spam filters and people are just going to unsubscribe and I don't want to risk it impacting my visibility or my open rates. This is a very common objection I get from people when they start to consider using email marketing to sell, whether it's a course, a coaching package, or a consultancy service. So let's dive into that today.
• 0:36
  Welcome to Master the Inbox, the podcast where creators, coaches and consultants come to learn how it is possible to sell with email marketing in a non spammy, non aggressive way. Hi, I'm your host Monica Badiu, and for the past four years I've been working with creators from all over the world. I help them generate millions of dollars in revenue solely by using email marketing. And we did it without burning list, without increasing unsubscription rates, and without getting hate email. And in this podcast I'm sharing my tips and my experiences so I can help you see that selling with email can be fun and it can be done from a place of love rather than fear. Let's dive right in to today's topic. So if you're worried about spam, you need to understand how spam filters work. Now there's a whole other more in detail conversation about that. So don't take this episode as like the only things you have to do or you have to take into account. In today's episode, I plan to just kind of help you see beyond of the fear that if you sell with email, you're going to, by default, send your carefully crafted emails into the spam box. This Bermuda triangle of email marketing. Now let's go back to spam filters.
• 2:13
  So spam refers to any unwanted email or content, text message, things like that. The idea of spam filters is to ensure that when somebody gets an email in their inbox, it's safe. It doesn't have any clickbaity links or malicious software that could negatively impact the reader. And this means that they are looking for specific triggers. Now, there are situations when the spam filters are going to be triggered by the usage of money or free in the subject line of your email. Now given that a lot of the sales emails are going to talk about amazing offer or limited time discount, these can sound like spammy content. So this is obviously a very normal concern to have. The idea is that your sales emails don't have to sound spammy. This is the whole idea behind this podcast. If you sound spammy, obviously you're going to trigger some spam filters. How many? Which ones?
• 3:27
  I can't tell you. I'm not a deliverability expert.
• 3:30
  However, there are some other elements behind how these spam filters work and what's going to trigger them.
• 3:37
  Obviously, if your emails look the same and you repeatedly send them like all caps lock, weird formatting, a lot of arrows that say click here, amazing discount.
• 3:53
  They all talk about the same thing with urgency and limiting time discounts over time, you're going to see your users disengage.
• 4:04
  And this is worse than actually using these potential trigger words because if your users disengage, your open and click through rates are going to go down. Potential unsubscribe rates can go up.
• 4:23
  And these are all additional elements that impact your deliverability. So it's not always necessarily about what you're writing in your sales emails that gets you into the spam box.
• 4:37
  It's a more complicated discussion where all these other elements make up for something called sender reputation score. So an email sender reputation score is something that an Internet service provider is using to evaluate if your domain is healthy.
• 5:00
  It's good for their users. As I mentioned before, there are specific and several elements that can impact your sender reputation.
• 5:11
  And this is email frequency, which is one of the potentially mostly ignored aspect of this because a lot of people, they don't really have a regular emailing frequency. So a lot of people, they're going to email subscribers a lot in the first week when they signed up for whatever it is you gave them, a freebie, your email list, your newsletter. But once that happens, they stop emailing on a regular basis, which over time helps the reader disengage. If they don't know who you are, they're not necessarily going to open your email. If they don't know who you are and they open your email and there's like no brand recognition whatsoever, they're going to hit unsubscribe or report spam. And this happens to me as an email user all the time. Every now and again I would get an email from someone I know, Brandon or Sara or whatever, and it's just like so random. It's like just one email and it's usually a sales pitch. So when that happens, I hit unsubscribe or I go into the history of my inbox to see, okay, so who's this person and when was the last time I got an email from them? If it was like six months ago, I am unsubscribing. So the frequency with which you're sending emails matters a lot more than you think.
• 6:40
  So keep that in mind. Another aspect of what can impact your sender reputation is your bounce rate. And this happens when you don't segment your audiences and you don't clean your email list. So bounce rate is basically the number of subscribers on your email list that don't actually receive your emails. Because yes, even if you have list, not all of them are going to receive your email. And I'm not just talking about inbox or spam, they're just not going to receive it. So if you don't clean your email list regularly, it doesn't matter how salesy your emails are, that bounce rate can impact you in the long term. Another aspect of this is positive versus negative engagement. So engagement in email marketing means opening your email, clicking the buttons. These are like the most basic, but other elements of this include unsubscription rates marking as spam deleting. Other ones include how much time they spent reading that email.
• 7:45
  If it's very short, can be negative. If it's longer, can be positive. What else do they do with that email?
• 7:52
  Do they send it to a friend? Do they reply back?
• 7:56
  So all of these elements of positive and negative engagement can also impact your sender reputation over time. Of course, we have the common ones like marking an email as spam and unsubscription rates. Now, a lot of these elements can simply be avoided by having a clean email list. And I'm going to talk you through how you can clean it up, how you can reengage your doormat subscribers in upcoming episodes. So make sure you subscribe and follow to get all the good stuff that's coming.
• 8:30
  The most important thing for you to do, and consider this as the action item for today's episode, is to make sure that you're not already marked as spam and this is going to open a whole new world for you.
• 8:45
  This should be done twice a year, especially if you're planning on running monthly promotions. So selling something with email every month, this is very important. When you're marked as spam, it doesn't just go to Google. So there are a few websites where you can go and check if you've been marked as spam and you are still going to get some unsubscriptions and then some spam rates. But if the spam rate goes up, you're eventually going to learn and you don't have to wait until your email platform triggers alerts because that can happen as well. So here are three websites where we can go. You can add your domain or ip and they're going to tell you if you've been marked as spam by some spam checkers. So here we go. We have Barakuda Central, we have trustedsource.org and we have senderscore.org. You're also going to find these links in the show notes, so make sure you check them out.
• 9:48
  The idea is that even if you do show up as like spam and you're not someone who does that, you have options to remove that tag from your domain. So you can do that cleanup, you can do that reengagement we talked about.
• 10:07
  You can even reach out to your email marketing provider and tell them, so I've done all of this and here's where I am right now. I want you to give me a new ip because I don't want to be marked as spam anymore.
• 10:22
  So I mentioned cleaning up the email list, which means dropping the dead weight. And I know it sounds aggressive and it sounds bad. And for those of you who have worked really hard to build a big email list, it's going to create some anxiety. But the idea is that if you have a lot of unengaged subscribers and they're not opening your emails, they're not doing anything, it's better to just get rid of them first because yes, it's going to help keep your emails out of the spam box again, part of a more comprehensive system, but it really doesn't serve any purpose. It's just for the idea of vanity. I have list but ten k are actually opening my emails and then only 1% or whatever is buying for me. So make sure you do that cleanup often. I'm going to talk more about cleaning your email list in podcast episodes to come. Now the best way, like the very best way to keep your sales emails out of the spam box is to create content that is relevant, that is valuable, that makes your audience say, I want to receive that sales email. I'm not a sales email. Maybe I'm not going to buy from this right now, but it's good. I want to read it. And this is an actual story. This has happened to the creators I have worked with. In one situation, we've had people who were opting out of the promotional emails and then sending emails a few days later saying, hey, I want to go back into that, send me those emails again because they're very valuable. So that's how you know you're doing a really good job. And throughout this podcast, I'm going to give you more tips on how to create that kind of sales pitch that is actually so valuable that your audience wants to read it. And this is one of the very missed opportunities of what it means to use email marketing for brands. And I think it's a very important element. I'll make a note to talk about this more in the episodes to come. Now, when I talk about making your emails context based and relevant and valuable, what I'm essentially saying is, why should your reader care about what you're even talking about? Why should they open that email? What's in it for them?
• 12:57
  And please remember that the discount, maybe with the exception of Black Friday, the discount is the smallest nudge possible. It's the most basic thing you can include in your sales pitch. And oftentimes it's not what actually drives the corrosion because you're not the only one in the market right now. You're not the only one offering a discount. It's even like people have become familiar with the tactics, so they know that if they wait, they could get a better discount. So remember, it's not about the discount. It's about explaining why your audience should care about what you have to say, what they're gaining out of it, and why you're even selling to them. Why should I care about your offer?
• 13:44
  I'm recording this in February. I'm a mom. I have a toddler. I'm a freelancer. I'm a copywriter.
• 13:52
  If you have me on your email list and you want me to pay attention, you have to create the content that serves the current context that I'm in and is also relevant to where I'm stuck and my goals. And you can only create this level of quality content if you know your audience. So talk to your audience, research, send them, survey, go through their responses, figure out what else are they reading, learning, who else are they actually listening to? What are their favorite authors, what are their favorite podcasts, what's actually happening, their everyday life. Because that allows you to tap into a very direct connection with your audience. And at this moment, not many brands are doing that, with the exception of the seasonal and holiday based sales. They don't really do a lot of work on meeting the audience where they're at. And when I'm saying this, it's like, hey, it's Valentine's Day, buy this product or get this discount so you can do whatever.
• 15:06
  Or hey, it's a new year, do you have any resolutions for the year? Or maybe you want to lose weight? Or maybe this is the year you're going to finally learn French. Well, get this course and you'll get closer. So this is like the basic level of conversation we have around tapping into the current context of your audience.
• 15:31
  And if you're listening to this, I'm hoping you can see what a major opportunity this is. Yes, it sounds like it's a lot more work, but we're talking about building a business for the long term. We're talking about creating a brand that is known for making an impact, that is known for respecting their audience, for delivering massive, massive value and knowledge. And if that's how you want to position your brand, then continue listening because that's what I want to teach you in this podcast. If that doesn't sound like you and you'd rather just go for short term gains and you're good with using fear mongering, maybe don't listen to this podcast anymore because I don't think you're going to hear good stuff about your approach. So now you know it's not necessarily about what you write or how you write it.
• 16:26
  Making sure that your emails don't land in the spam box is a more comprehensive approach to deliverability. It talks about what you send in your emails, what you actually talk about in your emails. It's about how you manage your email list, how often you clean it, how many of your subscribers are still engaged, how many aren't.
• 16:51
  It's about what they do in the email once they opened it. It's about how many people actually pay attention and read your content. So it's not just about quick tips and tricks and gimmicks to bypass the spam filters. This is email marketing, and it's a science at times. Don't take your email list for granted and start doing the good stuff from the beginning.
• 17:20
  Clean your email list regularly. Make sure you create content that is relevant to your audience. Keep an eye on your spam rates and make sure that once or twice a year you check to see your email sender reputation. Thanks for listening to master the inbox.
• 17:39
  If you want to learn more about using email marketing for your brand, whether you're a course creator, a coach or a consultant, head over to my website and you'll find a lot of different resources that can help you understand how it is possible to sell with email in a non spammy, nonagressive way.
• 17:58
  Until next time, stay curious.
• 18:04
  Our channel.