Tips and rules for newsletter marketing

Follow these rules to ensure successful delivery of your email.

It is vital that your marketing emails and newsletters are carefully written and also that your mailing list is tightly managed.

You must follow these rules, or your domain and our email server will be flagged for spamming!

• Obtain permission before you add anyone to your mailing list. Recipients must opt-in to your mailings.
   
• Never purchase a list of email addresses. These will be offered to you, but you will instantly be flagged as a spammer the first time you send to such a list.
   
• Manually deal with every single delivery failure or bounce message you receive after every send. If you send repeatedly to a dead address, you will be flagged as a spammer.
   
• Always provide an unsubscribe link somewhere obvious and clear. If people can't remove themselves instantly, they will simply hit the Spam button instead.
   
• There are laws that govern marketing email. If your email is a marketing or sales type of message, you need to follow the rules, or you can be fined for each email sent.
   
• Test your written content against a spam filter, such as Lyris’ Content Checker. This tool will tell you how your newsletter ranks in Spam Assassin and whether you need to change the wording or structure.
   
• Do not send to mailing lists directly from Outlook. Use the WonderWebs Campaign Manager or a third party campaign/newsletter tool instead as these are configured to send bulk email and handle delivery failures.
   
• Inform WonderWebs whenever you start using any 3rd party service for sending email. This might include campaign/newsletter services such as Constant Contact and Mailchimp, or cloud services such as Xero and SalesForce. Your domain's DNS settings must be monitored and updated to work with each new sending server.

These are some additional tips that are not required, but will improve your business regardless

• Don’t send too often. You risk making your customers tired of you. Send only when you have something important to say.
   
• Don’t let your permission “grow cold”. If you haven't emailed your subscribers for a long time, they may have forgotten where or when they opted in, and will flag you as a spammer in their inbox. To mitigate this risk, include a line like "You are receiving this email because you subscribed to our mailing list at www.wonderwebs.com".
   
• Always check your mailing list relay address for direct replies to your email. People will always reply to a newsletter even if you expressly tell them not to. If you don't respond, they will flag you as a spammer.
   
• Don’t send complex content in your email such as Flash, audio, JavaScript, videos, etc. Most people will only see a text version of your content in any case and complex content is often removed by services such as Gmail and Hotmail.
   
• Always provide an unsubscribe link somewhere obvious and clear. If people can't remove themselves instantly, they will simply hit the Spam button instead.
   
• Do use the word Newsletter in the subject if it is a newsletter
   
• Do not use certain words: live, billing address, discount, price, sale - Anything that sounds spammy
   
• Do not use all-caps anywhere.
   
• Test your newsletter. Send it to Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook etc. Different services will display your content differently. Ensure it remains legible and clear.
   
• Email your newsletter to a spam testing service: www.mail-tester.com