The first rule is to always have permission before sending an email.

It should go without saying, but you should never buy a list of emails or obtain them through any other unscrupulous means.

Not only is it unethical, but it’s also ineffective and can potentially land you in some hot legal water.

So email addresses should only be added when someone willingly opts in. It’s really that simple.

Otherwise, there’s a good chance that it will end up as spam.

Or in a worst-case scenario, you could be subject to a fine.

Here’s what the FTC has to say about the sender's information.

“You're ‘From,’ ‘To,’ ‘Reply-To,’ and routing information—including the originating domain name and email address—must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.”

In other words, you must clearly state who you are (or who your company is) and not include any inaccurate information that could mislead someone. 

For example, the sender information on my email might say “Emil from Sleeknote.”

This may be surprising to some email marketers.

But the FTC also states, “Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.”

Otherwise, you’re not following their requirements and your email could be marked as spam. 

It’s all about having some degree of traceability. 

So you’ll notice that nearly all legit businesses include their physical address toward the bottom of each email. It doesn’t have to be conspicuous, it just has to be there.

The ones who most commonly make this mistake are the small business owners who work out of their homes simply because they don’t want to have their home addresses advertised to the masses.

.And that’s understandable.

.In this case, your best bet is to get a P.O. box that you can use in lieu of your home address.

 “Email spam filters still look at the content within your email to decide whether it goes into the spam folder of your customer’s inbox.” 

Saying things like “Double your income!” or “You’re a Winner!” is a surefire way to gain unwanted attention from those filters. 

If they notice questionable “trigger words,” it’s a red flag and you’re email is likely to be sent to spam even if you have the best of intentions.  

So it’s important to know which specific words to avoid like the ones listed by the Digital Training Institute. 

These are a good starting point. 

But for an even more comprehensive list, check out these 438 email spam trigger words from Automational. 

An email’s headline is everything.

Besides the name of the sender, it’s the only thing a recipient has to go on when deciding whether it’s legit or not and whether they should open it.  

Convince and Convert even says, “69 percent of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line.”

So you need to nail it. 

Besides steering clear of trigger words, there are some other subject line best practices you’ll want to follow to keep your emails out of the spam abyss. 

These include:

When coming up with a headline, I recommend putting yourself in your subscribers’ shoes.

Is there any way that someone might think that your email is spam based on the headline? If so, tweak it until it’s presentable. 

Attachments should be avoided like the plague for two reasons.

First, they alert spam filters and reduce the chances of your email making it to the recipient’s inbox. 

For all they know, an attachment could be carrying some hardcore virus that’s just waiting to overtake an unsuspecting victim’s device. 

Second, they can slow down the load time of the email, especially if they’re big and bulky. 

Generally speaking, there’s no need to send a commercial email with an attachment. 

All of the information offers, and CTA could and should be included right in the body.

incorporating visuals into marketing campaigns has never been more popular.  

In fact, creating visual content is a top priority for 55 percent of B2C content creators. 

So it’s easy to see why many marketers would want their emails to be image-heavy. It’s simply a matter of aesthetics. But at the end of the day, spam filters could easily misconstrue this type of email and think you’re a scammer when in reality you’re simply trying to give subscribers some eye candy. So you need to be aware of this fact.

Now, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t use images. But you should be aware of your text to image ratio and strive for 60/40, meaning that your email should be roughly 60 percent text and 40 percent image.
 

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you absolutely didn’t want to receive any more emails from a particular company, but there was no way to unsubscribe? 

Best-case scenario, you annoy subscribers or wind up in the spam folder. 

Worst-case scenario, you actually get fined by the FTC. 

Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation. 

So it’s vital (not to mention legally required) to have an opt-out link like this one on a LinkedIn email.

This means that the email was sent to an inactive address and therefore not delivered.

If you do this on a large scale and consistently send emails to inactive email addresses, spam filters will often penalize your domain or ISP.

In turn, this greatly increases the odds of your emails going to spam. 

The solution?

Make sure that you’re continually “cleaning” your email list and deleting inactive addresses. 

Although email spell checks are good for catching most things, they certainly won’t catch everything.

Sometimes good old-fashioned proofreading by a human is your best bet for catching issues. 

Also, I recommend Grammarly. 

It’s a Chrome extension that makes sure you’re writing is readable, and I find it highly effective at catching even the most subtle of errors.  

Although there are premium paid versions, you can use the basic version completely for free, which should be sufficient for most email marketers’ needs.  So you need to be extra diligent about double and even triple-checking each email before sending it out.
 
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