Email marketing campaigns are given a spam score rating of 0-9. 0 is not spam, 9 will be blocked by any spam filter. Average setting for a spam blocker is 3 or 4. It’s always best to set up an email marketing campaign with a score of zero.  Sometimes re-writing phrases is a necessity to keep it from being blocked.

Here are just a few phrases that increase the spam score:

• Subject that starts with a dollar sign
• Subjects that contain a question mark and exclamation point
• All caps
• Multiple exclamation points
• Money back guarantee
• Cash back or money back
• No cost
• Free

Why would your email marketing be blocked?

When you are sending email marketing through our service and use your own email address as the “from” address, emails sent to yourself may be blocked by your server. When this happens, the email will either bounce or go to your junk mail. This is because your mail server is smart enough to know that the email that claims to be internal (your email address) is actually coming from an outside source. Don’t worry. This isn’t happening to your list unless they have the same email domain (@domain.com) as you.

In order to successfully get the word out about your products you need a good email list. A good email list of potential clients is an invaluable asset. There are a number of ways you can go about creating a good email list.

Offer Something Free

Offering something free is one of the best ways to get people to enter in their email address and name. However you need to make sure that you offer something interesting to the people you are trying to target. For instance if you are trying to target people who are interested in SEO software you should probably offer a free search engine report, since people interested in SEO software will certainly be interested in a free search engine report. All you need to do is to put a box that asks for their email address and name and email the download link to them, that way you can be sure that the email address belongs to them.

Start a forum

When people sign up for forums they usually enter in their name and email address along with a bunch of other things. The good thing about forums is many people tend to visit forms on almost a daily basis. So a forum will serve two purposes the first being that it will make it easy for you to compile an email list and the second it will make it easy for you to pin point exactly who needs what. For instance if you see a graphic designer on your form asking questions about InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator software this person is probably the right candidate for your Graphic Design Tutorials. You can send him an email letting him know that you are offering design tutorials.

Offer Premium Content

There are many blogs, and websites out there that offer content only to their members. Usually what they offer is a membership and all you have to do is to enter in your email address and name and you can now access this member’s section. This is an excellent way to build a good email list since each time you recommend something they will know that it’s coming from a credible source.

A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked at. Some links only show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within the a href tag. Due to canonicalization and hijacking related issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links.

Example absolute link

<a href=”http://korbyimagery.com/folder/filename.html”>Absolute Link</a>

Example relative link

<a href=”../folder/filename.html”>Relative Link</a>

Create and Submit your Sitemap:

Sometimes it’s the simple things that have the biggest impact.  Creating a sitemap is one of the easiest things you can do for your website but it is one of the most overlooked.  Sitemaps have a huge impact in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in regards to your website.   Make sure that after you launch your website that you have a sitemap ready.   This sitemap is essentially a map that tells a search engine’s spiders where to go when they are crawling your website for data.  This is especially important if you have large volumes of content, dynamic content (flash websites) or you’re just a new website getting out there.  Valuable applications like Google’s Webmaster Tools allow you to submit your sitemap which helps you get indexed faster for the content you want to be known for.

Be the voice of your industry:

You created your product or business and you’re the one who knows it the best.  It’s absolutely critical to show off your knowledge by writing powerful and compelling articles for major article submission directories which provide high quality links back to your website.  Not only will these articles boost your rankings, but they will let people know the intricate details about you, your product, or your service.

It’s impossible to avoid questions about your product or service; creating an FAQ portion of your website saves both you and your clients the headache of emailing back and forth about simple questions with simple answers.  FAQ’s create a place where they can find answers to questions they might have, and it provides another place on your website to show off your knowledge about your product to help boost your rankings for the keywords you’re targeting.

Press releases from places like PRWeb and PRNewsWire are great places to write and published press releases about your new business or service.  It provides quality content and if written compelling enough, engages the user to try out your product.

Listen to what others are saying about you:

Google Analytics isn’t the only way to measure success; there are tons of other ways to monitor conversations related to you and your business.  Social media streams like online blogs, forums, and microblogging services are great ways to see who is saying what about your service.  Not only can you interact with potential clients, but you can hear the stories of people who have tried your service which offers you valuable feedback.  Managing these online conversations is a great way to get testimonial advice which will make you and your business’s online presence even more credible.

Tweet Deck, the adobe air application, is a great way for monitoring twitter conversations about you.  It allows you to set up a search parameter so you can filter out all of the conversations on twitter for ones about your service. You can also use the twitter search through a web browser without installing software.  Friendfeed is another great way to listen in on conversations across multiple microblogging platforms to see what everyone is saying about you.

Keeping track of what people are saying about you on the internet so you can make positive & informed choices based on your users needs.

Always use your brand.

Always add your logo and corporate colors to your email marketing even if you are of looking at them. With each eNewsletter you send out, there is a good chance that somebody is looking at it for the first time.

Personalize your message.

Let your audience know at a glance your email is authentic. Use first names to establish familiarity and start a conversation.

Use catchy headlines.

Your headline is what will catch attention. Use it wisely. Here are some tips on writing headlines.

Keep it conversational.

Write like you are having a conversation with one person. The more authentic you sound, the more interesting your article will be even if your grammar stinks.

Add the articles to your website.

Make your information easy to find. Include a Newsletter Archives section on your website and link to it from your eNewsletters.