Don’t be a spammer (or look like one)
Crafting the perfect email appeal is a worthwhile investment.
But when that email lands in your recipient’s Junk folder (or just gets rejected entirely), it’s not worth much.
Big email providers like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo are constantly working to protect their users from anything that even smells like spam, and Google and Yahoo have announced specific changes that will make those protections even stronger.
Nobody will make you keep up with those requirements. But if you don’t, you can expect your emails to start landing in the Junk folder more often. (See yesterday’s email for actions you need to take to avoid this.)
Would you like an easy way to test whether your outbound emails measure up?
There’s a free service at mail-tester.com that does just that. It’s not a complete solution (nothing ever is), but its tag-line “Test the Spammyness of your Emails” is accurate enough.
I don’t get paid to tell you this. I just think it’s a useful service.
Actions you can take now:
Head over to mail-tester.com and notice that it generates a unique email address for your test (something like test-cls74kxqtx37f@srv1.mail-tester.com)
In CiviCRM, generate an email to be sent to that address (e.g. on one of your Draft mailings, send a test message to that address; or, create a contact with that address and send an email to that contact.)
Head back to mail-tester.com and click the “Then check your score” button.
Observe the results. If you’re seeing problems with DKIM, DMARC, or SPF, or any other domain-related problems, take action to address those issues.
If you don’t have someone on your team who can address these issues, please reach out to me (or your favorite CiviCRM specialist) to get it fixed.
Leaving these problems unattended will increase your chances of landing in the Junk folder.
And that’s not where you want your lovingly-crafted emails to end up.
All the best,
A.