Are Your Emails Going to The Spam Folder?

As bloggers, we are very busy people here. We run a lot of things ourselves including email marketing for our blog. But are your emails going to the spam folder?

This is great advice for any bloggers, not just a food blogger.

You’re spending a lot of time each week crafting emails to your subscribers, but none of that will do you any good if you don’t have a decent delivery rate. If those emails land in your potential customers’ spam folders, you don’t have much of a chance of making a sale or building a relationship with them.

Now I know you are probably thinking that “I won’t be selling anything, I run a food blog.” But truth is that you don’t really know for sure yet. You may write a cookbook or maybe sell a meal planner. Once you get going in the business, you may want to expand out (it happens a lot!)

If I had a dollar for every time I said I wasn’t planning on selling anything, I would have a lot of dollars. But I have 2 Etsy shops, 1 Shopify shop and a blog where I sell PLR content for printables. Not bad for “I will never sell anything anyway”, huh? Haha!

But regardless if you ever sell anything, you do want to build relationships with your readers. Besides on the blog, email marketing for our food blog is one of the best ways to connect.

So here are three tips that will help insure that your emails make it to your subscribers’ inboxes.

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Use A Reputable Auto Responder Service

Using a reputable auto responder service is the single best thing you can do to improve your chances of avoiding spam folders. Companies like Aweber, Mail Chimp, Convertkit and Get Response work hard at making sure they are white listed with the big Internet Service Providers and email providers like Gmail.

Our favorite here is Convertkit for our email marketing on the blogs. They have smaller priced packages for when you are starting out and for a small fee you can really do a lot.

We have one blog that we may try out MailPoet on (not a food blog) so if they are good too, we will let you know! I may test it out on our lifestyle blog.

Most auto responder companies will list their delivery stats. In addition the good ones will make sure your emails are compliant and keep you out of hot water.

Set Expectations and Keep Them

Your chances of staying in the main inbox are high when your subscribers regularly open your email. The best way to insure that – outside of providing great content that your subscribers are looking for – is to set expectations from the beginning. Let your subscribers know early on when and how often they can expect an email from you.

You can even use “foreshadowing” in your messages. For example, toward the end of your current broadcast email, mention that they can look for another email from you next Tuesday.

This is something that I wasn’t very good at in the beginning, I was pretty bad at email marketing for my blog. But I learned a lot along the way, not perfect but I will never be perfect!

So work out a game plan and think about what you can do consistently. They don’t need to see your emails 5 times a day (seriously don’t do that), but maybe you know you will send emails 1-2 a week.

Once you’ve set those expectations do what you can to meet them. Put them on a schedule. Yes, things happen every once in a while. In general though, do your best to keep your promise and email when your readers expect it.

Doing this regularly will improve your open rates and thus your overall deliverability.

The Importance of Cleaning Up Your Email List

Another good habit is to clean up your list regularly. If subscribers haven’t been opening your emails for the past six month, chances are good they are no longer interested in what you have to offer. This was one thing that I didn’t do in the beginning of my email marketing for my blogs.

Check your auto responder services manual or help files to see how you can go about deleting anyone that hasn’t opened an email from you in the past six months. If that freaks you out, or you have seasonal content they open, start by deleting anyone that hasn’t looked at your emails in the past year.

It’s ok to weed through and shorten up the list. When you start getting a lot of subscribers, the price goes up. You do not want to be paying extra money if only a handful of people are opening your emails.

Following these tips and keeping an eye on email deliverability in general will make sure your emails are being read by your subscribers and that’s the point of email marketing, isn’t it?

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