Spam complaints and how to avoid them

Recipients who flag your mail as “Spam” or “Junk” have the greatest impact on your reputation as a sender. It is essential you avoid this at all costs by delivering great and relevant campaigns to recipients who want to receive it.

To avoid complaints, you should:

• Never use a purchased, harvested or “scraped” list of any kind
• Ideally, they should have opted in to the list; at the very least, make sure you have a direct relationship with every single address on your list – ie, avoid sending on behalf of a third party
• Make your sign-up process clear, explaining what someone is signing up for, when they will start receiving emails, and how often they can expect to hear from you; you can also include this information in the confirmation email you send.
• Use a consistent sender name and email address
• Use a subject line that truthfully describes the content of your email
• Honor all opt-out requests immediately
• Abide by the rules of your email marketing provider and the spam laws of the country you reside in
• Keep your list up to date
• Don’t reactivate old addresses
• Send emails on a regular basis

If you comply with all of these rules, you’re off to a great start. To make things even better you’ll want your list (and the messages you send to them) to be both segmented and your content to be well-targeted.