Avoiding spam filters is the bane of every marketer’s life, right? Or at least it should be. Unfortunately 10-12% of emails you send will disappear into cyberspace due to very robust, automated technologies in place to prevent anything inappropriate reaching your prospects inbox. So how do you avoid ending up in those spam filters? Learn the best practice tips on what you can do to ensure you don’t end up in cyberspace. Things that we cover:  - How to overcome the challenges of deliverability - How spam filters work and how to avoid them - Simple mistakes to avoid - How to build and maintain your email reputation - Checking your sender score

1. DAMN SPAM

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13. Emails from a personal account get
opened.
Headline & first line most important
but must be different.
Ideal headline length is less than 100
characters
You have one sentence to make it
count!

15. + =same open rate

16. Headlines are pretty good as indicators, so that your
readers know the main points of what’s in your
paragraphs before (and whilst) they’re reading them.
Paragraphs
• Short, snappy sentences
• No bigger than about three lines each
• Using language that is easy to read (so no use of the
word
“pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses)”,
unless you really, really have to!)
• Listen: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

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RE: Meeting with CommuniGator
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22. • You: Speak to your audience not about yourself!
• Instant: Time is precious so offering something right away is much more appealing
• Easy: Keep it simple and make your audiences life easier
• Secret: There are always secrets to success, and we all want to know them
• Now: Encourage an action or an immediate response. (Limited offers are good here)
• Never: We are naturally attracted to negative words
• How to: Offer a fix to a problem to increase interactions with your content
• Real results: It’s what we all aim for!
• Template: Everyone likes being given an easier way to do something they know that works
• Proven: Tried and tested solutions are far more attractive

23. • Free: we all like a bargain and even better if it’s free!
• Dear: Try hi or hello instead
• Buy now: No one wants to be forced into parting with their money!
• Click here: Overused and known to all spam filters
• Unsubscribe: Again, overused. Try other wording such as ‘To stop receiving our messages’
• Sale: Again, people don’t want to be thinking about parting with their money and it’s a major spam
filter red-alert!
• Weekdays: Thanks to Cyber Monday and Black Friday, days of the week perform particularly poorly
• Internet slang: Apart from being dated, it won’t hit most target audiences
• Donate: Again, parting with money or time is not something people want to do!
• % off: Tends to be attached to a sales message, while symbols are often flagged by spam filters.

24. • Make sure your subject line is not misleading
• AVOID USING ALL CAPS
• Include spaces between each word
• Avoid overusing symbols such as !!!!!! Or ?!?!?!?!
Most importantly: Write in a conversational tone to make it sound like you are
not pushing products.

27. Suspect. Intrigue
(blogs, videos, hints and tips)
Prospect. Discover
(whitepapers, guides, resources)
Prospect. Consider
(Product features, case studies)
Lead. Decide
(pricing, demos, requests)
LEAD NURTURING CONTENT

30. BLOG: 5 killer sales
opening lines
BLOG: 5 most
powerful words to
include in your
email opening lines
BLOG: 3 steps to
seeing the
individuals on your
website
BLOG: Your
marketing
automation
planning template
BLOG: What you need
to know about new
email marketing data
laws
BLOG: 5 Bad marketing
automation practices
that will make your
customers quit
GUIDE: How to
generate new business
with GatorLeads
GUIDE: Back to basics
guide on email
marketing
WHITEPAPER: The state
of B2B Marketing
automation
WHITEPAPER:
Generating leads in
your sleep
GUIDE: The
architecture of an
outstanding email
design
WHITEPAPER: Which
social media marketing
methods are best for
you
SOLUTION: Lead
Generation
Overview
SOLUTION: Marketing
Automation Overview -
email marketing
CASE STUDY: Equinix
CASE STUDY:
Carrenza
SOLUTION:
Marketing
Automation
Overview
SOLUTION:
Marketing
Automation
Overview
Demo Offer
Meeting Offer
NOTIFY
SALES

31. WHITEPAPER in same
category
FEATURE in category DEMO OFFER
MEETING OFFER
DISCOVER
CONSIDER
DECIDE
CASE STUDY
NOTIFY
SALES

32. COLD UNENGAGED DATA: 0.93%-
COLD ENGAGED DATA: 6.49%-
WARM DATA: 11%-
HOT DATA: 17.24%-

33. Deliverability

35. Email is the most used, most valuable and highly-prized
real estate on the Internet. This is why everyone wants it.

37. In 2016, email turned 45 and shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, it’s one of the
most widely used and trusted channels for people to communicate today.
But the dark side of email is spam. While today’s spam filters do a good job of
keeping junk out of our inboxes, many organizations also get caught in the crossfire
of the war on spam when their emails end up in the spam folder. If your subscribers
don’t see your emails, then they can’t open, click, and convert.
While the importance of reaching customers’ inboxes is undeniable, the reality is
that many messages are missing the mark. This year, on average, one in five
messages failed to reach the inbox. Global deliverability also experienced a slight but
steady decline quarter over quarter, with 24 percent of messages missing the inbox
in the last quarter studied.

38. DELIVERABLITYBASICS
Emails that are able to
make past both
gateway and spam
filters are delivered to
the inbox.
Emails that are deemed
malicious or
untrustworthy are
often blocked at the
gateway, never
reaching the inbox or
the spam folder.
For messages that
make it
past the gateway, spam
filters look at the
reputation of the
sender, subscriber
engagement, and
content to decide if it
should be placed in the
inbox or the spam
folder.

39. DELIVERABILITY IS DULL AND BORING
IP Reputation
Authentication
DKIM
SPF Record Content
Engagement
Sending Domain Reputation

40. ESP SPAM JUNK CUSTOM
Infrastructure
Reported
Local
Not Reported

41. ESP
SPAM
JUNK
Office 365
Infrastructure
IaaS
Cloud
= Reported

44. ENGAGEMENT IS NOW KEY

45. Ideally, your email list would be populated exclusively
with the email addresses of people who are actively
engaged with your brand and want to receive your
emails. Reality is often very different, but it’s important
to strive for this ideal because the quality of your email
list can have a tremendous impact on your deliverability.
Mailbox providers like Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail, are
focusing more and more on subscriber engagement in their
filtering decision process. Marketers who frequently generate
high positive engagement from their subscribers are more
likely to reach the inbox, while marketers that generate low or
negative engagement from their subscribers find their emails
landing in the spam folder.
ENGAGEMENT
Messages replied to
Messages marked as “not spam”
A positive indicator that the message is likely personal in nature, and desired
A very strong positive signal that mailbox providers use to train their spam filters
Messages marked as “read” A positive indicator that the individual wants to receive your emails
Senders/domains added to address book A positive signal indicating that future messages should be delivered to the inbox

46. MAILBOX ACTIONS - POSITIVE ENGAGEMENT

47. BUILDING & MAINTAINING REPUTATION
If you send email, whether you know it or not, you have a sender reputation. Your sender reputation is a rating that helps
mailbox providers and spam filters determine whether your emails are trustworthy, safe and wanted.
Some of the metrics mailbox providers are likely to use when determining domain reputation are…
“This is not spam” rate
How many times a recipient went into their junk folder and marked a message from
this domain as “not spam”
Spam folder placement rate
Inbox placement rate
Complaint rate
How many times mail from this domain went into the spam folder due to IP address
reputation or content filters
How many times mail from this domain went into the inbox
How many times a recipient marked a message from this domain as spam

48. MAINTAINING QUALITY SUBSCRIBER DATA
Unknown users
Spam traps
Inactive subscribers
An unknown user is a recipient that never existed, has been terminated by the mailbox
provider, or was abandoned by the end user. Unknown user rates exceeding 10% will likely
cause deliverability issues.
Spam traps are email addresses that don’t belong to active users and are used to identify
both spammers and senders with poor data quality practices. Traps include recycled spam
traps and pristine spam traps aka “honey pots”.
Inactive addresses represent customers on your list file who have not opened, clicked, or
taken some kind of action for a significant amount of time. Not only could these addresses
be a source of unknown users or spam traps, but they also bring down engagement rates.
An unclean list has severe consequences on your
deliverability. Every spam trap, unknown user,
and inactive account on your list can damage your
reputation, your deliverability, and potentially can
land you on a blacklist.
Mailbox providers monitor the addresses to which you are sending
and will filter or ultimately block your mail if poor list quality is
identified. There are three types of data you want to monitor within
your list: unknown users, spam traps, and inactive subscribers.
Subscriber complaints are also a strong indicator of poor sending
practice, and are an important factor in filtering decisions.

49. Send email when subscribers
are in their inbox
Deliver messages designed to
engage
Know your subscribers’ email patterns and send mail when they’re most likely to see it
and take action
Capture attention with compelling subject lines, content that renders beautifully on any
device, and offers that align with subscribers’ interests.
Build relationships
To get subscribers engaged, senders need to build solid relationships from the beginning.
Set clear expectations, send a welcome message, and then follow through with what
you’ve promised.
SEND BEHAVIOUR
Re-engage inactive
customers
Develop a strategy to bring customers back into the fold and get them engaged with your
program

52. Special offers Access to exclusive content Promotion of new content
RE-ENGAGING INACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS
Invitation to opt-down or opt-
out
Re-engagement campaigns provide an opportunity for senders to recapture the attention of inactive subscribers and protect
the health of their email list. Keep in mind that because customers have different reasons for becoming inactive, you may
need a number of re-engagement tools in your arsenal.
Opportunities to update email
preferences

54. SPF (Sender Policy
Framework)
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified
Mail)
DMARC
SPF is an IP address-based authentication that validates that a message came from a mail
server (IP address) that is authorized to send mail for the sending domain.
DKIM provides a method for validating the domain name you send your messages from by
using publicly available cryptographic authentication. It signs each message in a way that
is difficult to forge, proving that the message came from the indicated sending domain.
DMARC ensures that legitimate email is properly authenticating against established
DKIM and SPF standards, and that fraudulent activity appearing to come from legitimate
domains is blocked.
AUTHENTICATION & INFRASTRUCTURE
Builds your domain reputation
Creates a portable reputation
Although a sender’s reputation is primarily attributed to the sending IP address, domain
reputation is becoming a key factor with mailbox providers. Domain reputation is based
on DKIM and DMARC authentication.
Your domain reputation will move with you regardless of what IP address you’re using to
deploy mail.
Protects your brand against
phishing and spoofing
DKIM and DMARC help protect your brand if spammers try to spoof your domain by
allowing spoofed emails to be flagged or blocked by mailbox providers.

55. SEND SPEED / IP WARMUP
IP warming is the practice of gradually increasing the volume of mail sent via a dedicated IP address according to a predetermined
schedule. This gradual process helps to establish a reputation with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) as a legitimate email sender.
When an ISP observes email suddenly coming from a new or “cold” (i.e. recently dormant) IP address, they will take notice and
immediately begin evaluating the traffic coming from that IP.
1. 50
2. 100
3. 500
4. 1,000
5. 5,000
6. 10,000
7. 20,000
8. 40,000
9. 70,000
10. 100,000
11. 150,000
12. 250,000
13. 400,000
14. 600,000
15. Double Daily

56. USE DIFFERENT IP ADDRESS & DOMANINS

57. Content is still a consideration, but many other
factors come into play such as IP address and
domain reputation, sending infrastructure,
engagement, complaints, and more. In addition,
content is a significant factor in individual
engagement, which in turn drives filtering.
It’s safe to say there’s no silver bullet, because there is a long list of criteria used in
determining whether a message should be considered spam. Every single mailbox
provider and anti-spam software has its own “secret sauce” when it comes to reading
and understanding the content of incoming messages.
There are certainly steps you can take to improve
the chances your messages will pass content
filtering…
Balance text and imagery
Check your HTML
Test, test, test
Don’t create messages as a single large image; this is a common spammer technique used in attempt to
bypass spam filters. Embedding large images in emails or using a lot of graphics can also slow the email
server’s ability to process mail. As a result, content spam filters will often flag such emails and stop delivery.
Most emails today are created in HTML, so having a nicely formatted HTML message is a good start. Broken
HTML can lead to a poorly rendered message and generate complaints if recipients believe it’s a phishing
attempt. Make sure your HTML is free of syntax errors and formatting errors.
Testing message content in a pre-deployment tool such as our Inbox Checker can help to identify
potential spam filter issues before you send. Once you identify content that is being flagged by spam filters,
continue testing to isolate what is causing the issues (subject lines, URLs/links, text, and/or images
1
2
3

62. Today there are more than 300 publicly available blacklists,
ranging from well-known and widely used lists to independent
blacklists. But not all blacklists are created equal when it comes
to the impact they have on your deliverability. In fact, anyone
can start a blacklist and decide what factors will result in being
listed.
Domain based
IP based
Spamhaus
URIBL
SURBL
Barracuda
SpamCop
Spamhaus
Office 365
Invaluement
Barracuda
Avoid using attachments
Include an unsubscribe
Send to small audiences
more frequently
Ask subscribers to add you
to their address book
Engagement based sending
Dont use large images / embedded
images
Full authentication on custom
domains
Segment send types (prospect /
suspect etc)
Don’t buy bad data and
spam people!
Lookup blacklist source
Evaluate impact and stop sending
Get your storyOnline delist submission?
Don’t be afraid to own up and say
sorry
Ask us for help!

63. 1. My “delivered” rate shows how many emails were delivered into the inbox.
DELIVERABILITY MYTHS
2. It’s my email provider’s job to fix my deliverability issues.
3. I have a low complaint rate, so my mail should be delivered to the inbox.
4. I don’t need to worry about inbox placement if I have a high Sender Score.
5. Avoiding words like “free” or symbols like !!! mean spam filters wont trigger.

64. 1. Time & Day Sending
GATORMAIL
FUNCTIONALITY
2. Batch Sending
3. Inbox Checker
4. Campaign Results
5. Confirmation Opt-In

65. TIME & DAY SENDING

66. BATCH SENDING

67. INBOX CHECKER
Inbox previews to see how the email looks in all popular browsers and mobile devices.
Authentication checks
Spam checks for all popular sources

71. CAMPAIGN RESULTS
How does your engagement look?
Did you get lots of bounces?
Do you export the bounces and analyse?

74. 1. Sender Score – https://www.senderscore.org/
ONLINE TOOLS
2. Return Path – https://returnpath.com/
3. MX ToolBox – http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
4. CommuniGator - https://www.communigator.co.uk/
5. …and many more spam or reputation check sites

75. Sender Score is a number between 0 and 100 that identifies your sender
reputation and shows you how mailbox providers view your IP address.
Your Sender Score is like a bank running your credit score to
gauge your credit history.
A Sender Score Below 70 Gets Aggressively Filtered
Sender Score < 70
Sender Score > 70
Sender Score > 80
You need to repair your sender reputation.
Continue following industry best practices and optimizing your email program.
You have a great sender reputation.

80. EMAIL IS A KEY CHANNEL!

81. Subject Line
From Address
Preview text - usually the first
two or three lines of the
design.

82. Newsletter
Company Name
If you can’t read this email,
click here to view it in your
browser.

83. info@company.co.uk
Looks dodgy
CommuniGator
Looks Spammy
Simon Moss
Looks personal

87. Latest News
Download our whitepaper
January Newsletter
Free webinar next Tuesday
Dan, take a trial of X today
Offer must end Friday

95. Recipients scan headings
and do not read text
Heading and sub heading
copy is critical
Recipients scan down
the left margin
Large fonts work well

96. Key calls to
action and links
should be inside
the “F”

98. THE SECRET TO
A FANTASTIC
NEWSLETTER
• Have a reason for doing it!
• Send it to small defined groups
• Content match to group
• No more than three articles, well laid out
• Clear distinct calls to action that meet the
objectives

101. 15.3% AVERAGE OPENS
14.3% AVERAGE OPENS
12.8% AVERAGE OPENS 12.4% AVERAGE OPENS
12.5% AVERAGE OPENS
7.5% AVERAGE OPENS
6.4% AVERAGE CLICKS 3.5% AVERAGE CLICKS
9.9% AVERAGE OPENS
9.7% AVERAGE OPENS
13.4% AVERAGE OPENS
11.2% AVERAGE OPENS
8.2% AVERAGE
OPENS9.7% AVERAGE
OPENS

108. Lee Chadwick
Seminar: Lifting the Lid
on Email Marketing
Lee Chadwick
Calling all Email Marketers

109. Harriet Wooding
✪ Super Sub & Skills Starvation ✪
Harriet Wooding
Super Sub & Skills Starvation

110. Not Telling
Pubic Training Course
Not Telling
Public Training Course

114. Hi Simon,

118. 0.00%
0.10%
0.20%
0.30%
0.40%
0.50%
0.60%
0.70%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Ave Click %

119. TEST, TEST & TEST!
[Optimization Summit] 3 Days to a Better Website ($300 Off Coupon Inside!)
(Value Exchange, Incentive)
Learn 3 tips that made 10,000 landing pages extremely successful
(Value Exchange, No Incentive)
Optimization Summit 2012 – Speakers List Now Up! + Save $300 Today
(Newsworthy, Incentive)
Quarterbacks aren’t the only changes being tested in Denver.
(Curiosity)
A scientific way to increase your conversions
(Benefits)
Do your landing pages pass this test?
(Fear)
TESTING DIFFERENT MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS….VIA SUBJECT LINES

120. TEST, TEST & TEST!
“FEAR” WAS THE WINNER – 125% MORE UNIQUE CTR’S
Source: Marketing Experiments
APPLY IT TO YOUR HOMEPAGE, PRODUCT
PAGES, BANNER ADS, PPC ADS…
DON’T JUST USE IN EMAIL

121. 2. What’s the worst word you can put in your email
1. Name the 3 authentication tools
3. How old was email in 2016?
4. What % did graphic led emails by Hubspot underperform by compared to plain
text style?
5. What are the four pillars of content relating to lead scoring?
6. Which is the BEST email, lead gen and automation provider?

122. THANK YOU!Contact us to discover what we can do for you
Info@communigator.co.uk
CommuniGator.co.uk