As per an online report, there are more than 250 billion emails are sent every day worldwide. There’s no surprise that more than 50% of these emails are business emails (more of promotional or marketing emails). Generally, an average open rate of 20-30% is considered pretty good in email marketing. This means only 2-3 emails are read for every 10 emails sent (need not to mention that only a 3-5% click-through rate can be expected from the email marketing these days).
Now just imagine, what open rate you can expect if your emails go to the SPAM folder. Based on the statistics above, I can clearly say that you may not even get a 1% open rate (1% is still very high). Your email may never get read and will be automatically deleted after a month. You just end up wasting your time and money.
There could be many reasons for an email going into spam, one common reason is the excessive use of spam words or phrases that triggers spam filters and your emails just land into spam/junk folder. You should avoid these spam words or phrases in your email body as well as the subject line to get the most out of your email campaigns.
Email Marketing is one of the most important digital marketing channels. If you don’t care about the content of your email (most importantly spam words or phrases), you may be disappointed with the result from your email marketing campaign. Here in this post, we have listed some of the common spam words and phrases to avoid in email marketing to ensure better delivery of your emails to recipient’s inboxes.
Common SPAM Words & Phrases To Avoid In Email Marketing:
There are some certain spam words that immediately raise suspicion. Then there are milder words that only effect when you use them in excess. Below are some common words or phrases that you should avoid in your email marketing.
This might not be the complete list, but it will help you get an idea of what types of words or phrases you should avoid in your email content.
A B C: Accept credit cards, act now, additional income, affordable, all natural, all new, amazing, apply now, apply online, bargain, best price, buy, call now, call for free, card accepted, cash bonus, click here/click now/click below, cost/no cost.
D E F: Dear Friend, deals, discount, do it today, do it yourself, don’t delete, double your income, earn extra cash, email harvest, eliminate debt, extra income, for free, for just $XXX, fast cash, free for you only, free gift, free installation, free membership, free offer, free preview, free trial, and free website.
G I L: Get it now, giving it away, guarantee, increase your sales, incredible deal, insurance, investment/no investment, legal, lose, limited time offer.
M N O: Message contains, month trial offer, mortgage, no gimmicks, no hidden cost, no hidden cost, no investment, no obligation, offer, one time, one hundred percent free, opportunity, order/order now/ order status, and order shipped by.
P R S: Please read, porn, pre-approved, profits, promise you, real thing, risk free, satisfaction guaranteed, spam, serious cash, special promotion, and success.
U V W 1: Unlimited, urgent, U.S. dollars, vacation, viagra, warranty, weight loss, weight gain, win/won, winner, wife, work at home, 100% free, 100% satisfied, 50% off.
Other Things That You Should Avoid In Email Marketing
- Don’t add RE: to subject lines (if/as it’s not a reply)
- Don’t use all caps, very bad for user experience too
- Don’t make spelling or grammar mistakes
- Don’t use one-word subject lines
- Don’t use exclamation points in your subject line
- Don’t embed forms in emails
Along with avoiding spam trigger words in your email and avoiding the things we just discussed above, there are many other things you should be careful with, to avoid your emails getting into the junk folder. Here are some of those important things.
Properly Coded HTML Email
Spam filters are very smart these days and they can easily spot badly coded HTML emails. Be cautious while using automatic (so-called drag and drop) HTML email creating software, also, never use text editors like Microsoft Word for creating and converting the file to HTML emails. Most of the people not familiar with HTML coding, use these kinds of tools to create their HTML emails which ultimately results in getting their emails to the spam folder, and obviously they do not get results from the campaign.
If you are not familiar with the HTML coding, it is highly recommended that you should hire a professional HTML Mailer Designing Service Provider to get your emails designed in a proper way. You are spending time and money in sending emails, what’s the use if your emails go to spam and you don’t get the result from email marketing, thus it’s worth spending a bit in your email designing.
Proper Email Formatting
Your email should not be very large (in terms of length as well as size). Do not use unnecessary large images (both in terms of image dimensions as well as size). Also, maintain a proper text to image to HTML codes ratio. Do not use excessive bright background or text colors. Set a proper width for your HTML Mails, it should not be very wide. Many of these could actually get your emails to ESP’s spam folder and not only that, most of these things are bad for user experience too.
Segment Your List (A/B Testing)
SPAM emails are usually sent in large bulk, which also triggers spam filters. To avoid your emails going into spam, segment your list, or break your list in small parts and send targeted emails on a regular basis.
Here, regularity is very important, we have seen marketers sending emails in a bulk once and then not sending any emails for a few days after that. If you sent emails to small lists on a regular basis, you actually build trust with ESPs. Also, do not forget to do A/B testing with different copies of your emails and with different subject lines. It will help you improve your email open rate and get you a better result.
Conclusion
Email marketing is not just sending out emails, it’s much more than that. Most of the email marketers struggle with getting their emails to their prospect’s or customer’s email inbox. If you could avoid the spam words and phrases in your emails, there will be less chance of going your emails to the recipient’s spam folder. Spend some time and go through your email content and make sure you remove (avoid) these spam words and phrases from your emails for better delivery of your emails.
