Background
Although spam is not as common as it used to be, it is estimated to make up over 50% of all emails sent. Given roughly 1 of every 2 emails received may be spam, email providers can be very aggressive in how they categorise emails. At Movio, we are constantly working to ensure all emails originating from Movio are considered legitimate. Our services provide a world-class email platform that follows all industry guidelines and best practices. Despite Movio’s high-quality infrastructure for sending emails, there are many reasons why an email could be erroneously considered spam. Therefore, it is important exhibitors implement best practices for sending emails on their end to increase successful email deliverability.
Targeting
Targeting is the most important way to make sure emails end up in a users' inbox. If the wrong people are contacted, it can negatively impact your business. Hitting dedicated email addresses from email providers to catch spammers, commonly known as ‘spam traps’, can significantly affect your email server’s reputation.
Best practice tips
- Target engaged users frequently: An engaged user interacts with the email you send them (open or link clicks). Email providers track low engagement of received external communications to determine if they are spam
- Exclude unengaged recipients: Exclude contacts from further campaigns who have not engaged with your emails at least once over the last 3-6 months. Start by reducing the frequency with disengaged contacts and exclude them completely if they continue to be disengaged
Content
Email providers run automatic checks to determine if the email looks like spam or if it falls under user-generated ‘spam complaints’.
Best practice tips
- Use short subject lines
- Avoid excessive emojis and phrases (e.g. free, win and $)
- Avoid an image-heavy email with a good balance between text and images
- Ensure your text is easily readable against the background
- Be mindful of unintentional ambiguous words that might attract attention (e.g. promoting the movie ‘Springbreakers’ could be seen as spam)
- Ensure you include valid links only
Spam complaints and email length
A recipient marking an email as spam results in an unsubscribe and the sender gets tracked by the recipient’s email provider. This complaint rate should always stay under 0.1% to avoid an impact on deliverability.
Best practice tips
- Ensure recipients are receiving content they have signed up for
- Ensure targeted and relevant content by using propensity-based segmentation and Dynamic Content in Email
- Ensure the ‘unsubscribe’ link is always present, visible and easy to follow
Email length and file size
Keep the email file size (the weight of the HTML code) low. This can be achieved by using shorter email content. Otherwise, providers like Gmail ‘clip’ emails which means the full content and the unsubscribe link aren’t displayed, and the tracking pixel used to calculate email opens won’t load.
Best practice tips
- Reduce the amount of content and create a more personalised email by using Dynamic and Conditional Content
- Ensure your email file size stays within the 102KB limit by sending a test to a Gmail account
Optimise your email templates
If you feel your current email templates won’t allow you to implement these best practices, please contact your Account Manager to discuss a modification of your templates.