How to Maintain a Positive Email Reputation

Email marketing is a necessary tool for your business to thrive in today's digital world. With so many companies utilizing email as their go-to communication, it is essential to hold a positive email reputation.

What is an email reputation, and how do you make sure you have a positive reputation? Your reputation is a score that service providers assign to you. A higher score means a greater chance for your email to make it to the inbox. How to get that high score is a little more complicated, though.

DO

Include Email Opt-Ins

Offer your leads and clients a double opt-in. A double opt-in is when someone subscribes to your email list, they immediately receive an email from you asking them to confirm their email address. A double opt-in ensures that your email list is comprised of real people and not bots. An opt-in also helps you to narrow down who actually wants to receive your emails and hopefully results in fewer unsubscribes.

Personalize Your Emails

Include your recipient's name not only in the email body but in the subject line as well. Personalized emails increase the chance of your email being opened and help develop a personal relationship with your recipients, leading to a positive email reputation.

Segment Your List

Break your list into smaller groups and send different variations of the same email and subject lines. This can help you with your A/B testing to find what content works best for you and your audience. It also increases the chances of your email making it to the inbox rather than getting nabbed by the spam wall.

Send Quality Content

This one may feel obvious, but when you email your database, make sure you send content they are interested in! Think about your personal inbox. What kind of content do you want to see? Something that applies to you and your interests or arbitrary articles and emails that mean nothing to you? Sending aimless emails to your list will result in lowering your email reputation.

Clean Up Your List

Be sure to keep your email list updated. If a client unsubscribes, make sure you don't keep sending them emails; otherwise, you risk service providers marking you as spam. Even if you have valid email addresses, you need to be making sure they are all still active users. Continuing to send emails to expired email addresses or just people who don't interact with you results in service providers viewing your emails as spam and marking them as such for all the emails you send out. Make sure your email lists are active and clean, so you don't have to worry about getting stuck in the junk box!

DON'T

Use Spammy Language

Service providers have noted what kind of language spammers typically include in their subject lines and emails. Ensure you aren't using this language in your communication with leads and clients; otherwise, you risk a lower score! It is easy enough to search for lists that explain what words constitute as "spammy," but here are a few to keep in mind for your next email:

• Opportunity
• Cheap
• Investment
• Lowest Price
• Loans
• Incredible Deal
• Mortgage
• Home
• No Obligation

Use Excessive Exclamation Points or All Caps in Your Subject Line

You may think that multiple exclamation points and ALL CAPS will get your reader's attention, right? Well, THINK AGAIN!!!! Spam walls have picked up on this tactic and rarely allow emails that look like this through and into inboxes. Grab your reader's attention in different ways! Check out some good subject line examples here!

Purchase Email Lists

Renting or buying email lists is one of the worst things you can do for your email reputation. It doesn't give you a foot in the door; instead, it does quite the opposite. People on these lists don't want to receive anything from you. Chances are, your email will be marked as spam, which will mess up your emails to reliable sources. It is easy enough to grow your email list organically, plus don't you want to be marketing to people interested in working with you? Use social media, landing pages, and other marketing tactics to grow your email list naturally.

To view the original article, visit the Wise Agent blog.