2017 saw a surge in new businesses in Mississippi and a growing list of resources and associations to get them off to the best possible start. 2018 looks set to follow in a similar vein. This is the age of entrepreneurial spirit, and the ease with which technology allows anyone to set up an online or home-based business means barriers to entry have never been lower.
But it is one thing setting up a business, it is quite another making a sustainable success of it. All these new businesses need to reach out to customers to have any hope of survival, and email marketing is one of the most common ways of doing so. Done well, it is an effective route past the gatekeepers to the inboxes of those who matter. But there is one final hurdle at which so many carefully constructed communications fall – the dreaded spam folder.
Tips from the horse’s mouth
If you want to know how to avoid falling foul of spam filters, the best people to ask are those who create them. There are some simple steps that every business can take to prevent their message from entering the dark recesses of the spam filter as recommended by EveryCloud, one of the most trusted and innovative experts in the spam filter field. Here are some of the key takeouts that every business and email marketer needs to keep in mind.
1) Don’t buy lists
There are numerous people out there who will offer to sell, share or rent out lists of email addresses. There’s also plenty of software that will scrape email addresses for you. It might look tempting, but it will only lead to a world of hurt. There are other digital marketing tools to help you build a contact list organically. It might take longer, but it will be worth it.
2) Authenticate
Email authentication might sound like a pain, but it pays dividends. While filters from specialists like Everycloudtech are more sophisticated, the free ones that so many people use in programs like Gmail and Yahoo operate on simple principles. Eying unauthenticated email addresses as probable spam is one of them, so take some time, and get some help – it will make all the difference.
3) Keep it current
An organically created email list is great, but it needs constant maintenance or things will start to slide. Over time, people move on, lose interest or become disengaged for other reasons. It is part of life, but if you keep emailing the same old distribution, the lower engagement levels and increased bounce rates will start to show. Keep it clean and fresh, and you will look less like a spammer.
4) Monitor
It is impossible to get everything right first time, so see email marketing not as a hurdle to jump but as an ongoing strategy to be constantly refined. Keep track of your click through rates, open rates and other metrics and use these to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. 
