so you're sending out emails for your business but how do you make sure they actually get opened and don't end up in the spam folder that's what we're covering today on the journey [Music] if you're a business owner or an entrepreneur emailing is probably pretty important to you whether you just need to communicate with customers or prospects or email marketing you want to make sure that all of your time and effort isn't going to waste yeah spammy emails can sideline your business and if you're sending out email marketing campaigns just a ton of time wasted so first it's important to realize what causes spammy emails we've all been there before where a legitimate message gets delivered to the spam folder that's so frustrating but typically if it's going to the spam folder that means something in that email is triggering that spam filter yeah and there's a range of things that can be causing that and it's it starts with having a really bad spam score so there's different things like spammy subject lines maybe there's a link that might not go to a reputable site it is the content in the message itself uh maybe how many people you're sending to bounce there's tons of different things that can impact that spam score and ultimately make your email go into the spam folder every email provider has their own list of rules and processes but here are a couple universally accepted ones that you can follow to help increase that email open rate yeah starting with using a domain based email as a business you want to be credible and professional so you shouldn't be sending from gmail or yahoo or any of those other free email providers but send from your domain it makes you real and those spam filters understand that so as a business of awesome austin t-shirts you want to send from that domain name so your audience knows it's coming from you yeah and then you have that brand consistency it's easy to remember but it also makes you look a lot more credible the second tip is to have your name and a physical address inside the actual email i know it's scary to have your actual address which some why some people use like a po box or their commercial business but you have to have this in accordance to the canned spam act can spam that's fun to say can oath spam yeah not that but the other type so it's all about regulations that you have to follow so that from subject for an email can't be misleading it's got to be accurate and then again have that physical address in there so that they actually know that this is a credible business yeah and you have to use these on all of your email marketing campaigns or something that's commercially sent spam filters are checking for these things so if you don't include them it can end up in that spam folder our third tip is craft an appropriate and accurate subject line this is basically your introduction to your readers whenever you're sending that email so make sure it's not only catchy short but also accurate that's whenever it can go to the spam folder so if it's not if it's misleading or it's talking about something else that's not accurate not only is that going to turn off the people who are reading the email it also looks bad to those filters right like if you put you just won a million dollars is your subject line you're probably going to have like 100 open rate but 100 spam filter rate if you're trying to sell your product or doing something else that isn't about winning a million dollars as a consumer i would be really mad i'm gonna go unsubscribe what a bummer number four is to monitor your email metrics these are things like open rate bounce rate engagement clicks forwards all those good things that go behind the scenes of your email marketing campaigns now the thing you want to look at is the actual bounce rate the more your emails are being bounced the higher your spam score is going to be which is ultimately going to make you end up in those spam folders now what i recommend is about every six months or so go into your actual email list and see who hasn't opened your emails at all and remove them from the list altogether that way they don't end up on that bounce list eventually yeah especially if someone's instantly deleting your emails that can actually negatively impact your spam score so go through weed out those people it may seem like a great thing to have all these people subscribed to your email list but ultimately it can hurt you if people aren't interested in opening your emails yeah the quality of your your subscribers matter not the quantity and with that make sure at the bottom of your emails again going back to like that can spam act you have to have an unsubscribe option make it easy for people that don't want to see your emails do you unsubscribe because they don't want to see your emails they probably don't want to do business with you and they're just taking up space with your email marketing program our fifth tip is send valuable email content so think about it from their perspective if you're gonna open an email and read it make sure it's actually something that they want to read i know i've got about 10 seconds before work every day where i'm looking at emails and if it's not interesting i'm deleting it i don't care to read it no one has time for that so make sure it's actual valuable content that they're gonna find useful yeah and go into your own inbox too like literally right now and see the content that you're consuming on a daily basis and try to understand why you like it is it's the person's story is the visuals they're using is just the deals take those things and take those learnings and apply them to your own business yeah and don't forget to get to the point i mean if there's a call to action like hey 50 off or whatever put it at the top of the email so that you get their you know attention right away and you capture that attention so that it actually turns into something valuable for your business yeah and one thing i really really like to do especially when i'm coaching my clients is to make sure they've set up their own sort of introductory email series so as soon as somebody subscribes they're gonna get a first message and then a couple days later another message another message and then those emails you get to really tell your story and deepen the connection of you as the business owner with that new subscriber and really tell them what they're all about add a couple tips add value there so they actually trust your content and then when you do send off things later they've already know what you're about they're more apt to actually open those than to send you this fan filter tip number six is pretty self-explanatory but still very important make sure you're using correct grammar and capitalization so that is the first red flag when they're looking for an email that may be spammy make sure you're using that through every single part of your email from the subject line all the way to the very end yeah if you're not a english major and that's kind of a struggle to you there's a free tool called grammarly it's a browser extension you can add on that will help you with some of those corrections so it helps it makes you sound legible tip number seven is to avoid using terms that are commonly used by spammers right so those email filters are on the lookout all day every day trying to block those and if you're using some of those same terms that they're using you're gonna get lumped in with the wrong crowd yeah think about your own inbox if you were going through what are some red flags where automatically those words make you realize hey this is a spam email you're automatically deleting it think about words like bonus you know winner cheap deal order now things like here exactly really anything that you just look at and you're like ugh this no it's not for me you're the winner of a million bucks like you said earlier automatically gonna delete that because i know i didn't win a million dollars unfortunately there are a ton of different words that you should look out for but the bottom line is make sure it's authentic and you're not just throwing in those random words to try and grab their attention tip number eight is to avoid embedding excessive files these are things like images videos attachments these are basically used commonly by spammers and people that are being malicious to send viruses out and you again might be lumped up in that that wrong crowd and be categorized as spam when you're sending actual content yeah and don't get us wrong i mean using images in your emails that's great but just don't go crazy with it use them sparingly our ninth and final tip is include an unsubscribe link not only is it part of that can spam act you've got to include that but it also is good practice i mean if you don't have an unsubscribe link at the bottom then people can't unsubscribe and you just seem shady yeah and honestly those people that are wanting to unsubscribe chances are they're not going to be doing business with you anyway so it's better to have those quality subscribers in your email list than quantity that don't want to see your content yeah you don't need them anyway by keeping those tips in mind it'll not only help you increase communication it's also going to help increase that email open rate for you which is a win-win for everybody so those are our nine tips to help increase your email open rates make sure you smash that like button if you got some value out of this video let us know your tips down below in the comments and while you're at it subscribe to our channel and ring that bell so that you're the first to know when we upload more new videos thanks for watching this is the journey
