From Junk Folder to Inbox

I was doing my random scanning of my inbox that I use for collecting emails that I dont read on a regular basis but like to see what marketers are up to and noticed well established brand's messages were landing in my spam/junk folder. One in particular stuck out to me, being 1-800-Flowers. Although its not Valentines day where I imagine it's 1-800-Flowers busiest time of year, with the holidays approaching where flowers, table settings or gifts may be purchased I wanted to provide some tips to help ensure not only 1-800-Flowers message lands in the inbox but other email marketers messages do as well.

From an initial overview of 1-800-Flowers emails, I noticed a few things instantly that could relate to the messages being sent to the junk folder. With that, to avoid your message from going unnoticed prior to sending out your message:

• Avoid the use of spammy keywords
• Avoid use of all CAPS in the subject line
• Avoid punctuation in the subject line such as exclamation points, question marks, etc.



• Test your subject lines and HTML against spam scoring tools, so if you want to use the word, 'free' for instance, you'll have a better idea of whether the email will be flagged or not
• Avoid sending to recipients who are not opening your messages
• Do not fill my inbox with your messages, especially if I'm not opening them
• Avoid using 1-800, 1-888 numbers in the body of the email

Things to avoid in an email all depend on how you use them of course and in reading, have come across a tip on avoiding the use of 1-800 or 1-888 numbers within the email content. Since 1-800 plays a large part in regards to 1-800-Flowers brand I wanted to determine if this was its route cause for its messages being delivered to my spam/junk folder. I ran the email through a spam rating tool and the email was in fact dinged for spam but it was noted under the reply to address as being spammy. Something interesting to test further would be to determine if it was marked as spam due to the reply to address including 1-800 or the fact that the email itself was marked as spam for over messaging to its audience since it shares the address with the 'From' address. I did not compare the spam score against another spam scoring tool so it would be interesting to see how it matches up.

Fortunately 1-800-Flowers has a well established brand name so people know where to go when they need flowers however subscribers may be missing out on the great deals and offers 1-800 Flowers has to offer. With that, to reinstate the main message of this post, testing is critical. Depending on the detail of your QA department or what spam scoring tools provide you, it never hurts to send a live message to yourself and multiple email clients especially when dealing with the BtoC audience to see where your message ends up (spam folder or inbox) and if its worthy of being read once found. Lastly upon your message being delivered, find out where it ends up and if it is in fact the junk folder, take the corrective measures to ensure it doesn't happen the next time round.