Do not manually add emails that you got off of business cards collected at a conference. While you may think that they would appreciate your newsletter, sending emails to them violates the CAN-SPAM Act because they did not give you express permission.

Even if you never send spam yourself, your emails could get flagged as spam if your IP address was used by someone else for spam.

For example, if you send your campaigns through MailChimp, your email is delivered through their servers. So if even one other customer sends spam, it could affect your deliverability as well.

(Note, however, that MailChimp is very vigilant about keeping their sending reputation intact, and they have very strict procedures and regulations in place to prevent this.)

In general, stick to a reputable email service provider and you should be fine. Some providers we recommend are MailChimp, Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft and ConvertKit.

Top webmail providers have stated that they look at how many emails are opened and how many are deleted without being opened as a factor in their spam filtering decisions. This is the top reason for inbox placement issues, effecting 26% of email campaigns incorrectly flagged as spam.

So if you have low open rates, your emails are at higher risk of being flagged as spam.

To increase your open rates, send your emails at the right time, perfect your subject lines, segment your list, and keep your list fresh.

The second most common reason that emails never reach the inbox (affecting 21% of emails) is spam complaints.

Every time a subscriber reports an email as spam–even if it isn’t really spam–this complaint gets recorded by the mailbox provider. Once the complaints exceed a certain threshold, all future campaigns skip the inbox and get sent directly to the spam folder.

So why would a subscriber flag your email as spam if it isn’t spam? Well the most likely reason is that they simply don’t remember you. Even though they gave you permission to email them, they don’t remember doing it, so they think you are sending them spam.

To prevent this from happening, make sure that the branding in your emails is memorable, and matches the branding on your website. This includes any images, colors, typography, voice, etc. Also, make sure the “from” line is from a name they will recognize.

If your subscribers don’t immediately remember who you are, you could get spam complaints, so keep that in mind.

Also, make sure to include an easily accessible “unsubscribe” link so that they can opt out if they no longer want your emails.

The fifth item on our list, and the third most common cause of low inbox placement (affecting 19% of emails), is low mailbox usage.

In their spam filtering algorithms, mailbox providers look at the ratio of active to inactive email accounts on your list. An inactive email account is an account that hasn’t been used in a long time, or is very rarely ever used.

If you are mailing to a large number of addresses that appear to be nearing abandonment, that is a red flag to spam filters.

To prevent this, “clean” your email list periodically of any subscribers who haven’t engaged with your campaigns in a while.

As the CAN-SPAM act states, it is actually against the law to intentionally mislead someone with your subject line in order to induce them to view the message.

In a survey conducted by Litmus and Fluent, over 50% of participants stated that they have felt cheated, tricked or deceived into opening a promotional email by that email’s subject line.

Here are some examples of misleading subject lines:

• Did I leave my jacket at your place? – a trick to make it look like they know you.
• RE: CURRENTLY IN OFFICE – made to appear like a work related message.
• Urgent – Update your information – there is actually no urgent matter to attend to.
• Thanks for your order! – no order or transaction has actually taken place.

You may be thinking that you’d never resort to these cheap tricks. However, you may be tempted to fall into more of a gray area.

For instance, you might have just written a blog post that you want to send your email list. To get them to open the email, you might include a subject line such as, “8 Reasons You Should Never Post to Social Media”. However, your email says, “Just kidding. I’m not suggesting that you never post to social media. However, here are 8 tips…”

It’s best to avoid these gray areas. Some of your subscribers may be amused but others may not. It’s simply not worth the risk of getting complaints.

It’s also against the CAN-SPAM ACT to mislead anyone with your “from”, “to”, “reply-to” and routing information.

For example, if you made your email look like it was from the President, that would be illegal. (An extreme example, but you get the point.)

As a best practice, make sure you do include a name in the “from” field that your subscribers are likely to remember, and don’t change it too often. It could be the name of an individual, your company name, or a combination of the two (e.g. “Syed from OptinMonster”). Whichever you choose, go for memorability and consistency.

Did you know that it is actually against the CAN-SPAM Act to neglect including your valid, physical address?

Your emails must include either your current street address, a post office box that has been registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.

If you are a small business owner and you work out of your home, we recommend getting a P.O. box for business purposes so you don’t have to mass broadcast your home address.

No matter how valuable you think your email campaigns are, you still need to give your subscribers a potential out. If you don’t, you could get spam complaints (at best), or slapped with thousands of dollars in fines.

At the bottom of your emails, include an “unsubscribe” link, or a similar opt-out feature.

Also, when someone asks to be removed, you need to honor that request promptly. Specifically, you must process that request within 10 business days.

You can’t charge a fee for this, ask for any information beyond an email address, or make the subscriber take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on your website.

For example, you can’t make subscribers fill out a form that explains why they are opting out before they can unsubscribe. If you do want to survey your unsubscribers, show them the survey right after they have successfully opted out or in the unsubscribe confirmation email, not before.

Never sell or transfer the email addresses of your unsubscribers to another mailing list.

Some spam filters are triggered by certain words in the subject line or the body of the email. Some spam trigger words include:

• amazing
• cancel at any time
• check or money order
• click here
• congratulations
• dear friend
• for only ($)
• free or toll-free
• great offer
• guarantee
• increase sales
• order now
• promise you
• risk free
• special promotion
• this is not spam
• winner

Your email provider may have a built-in tool that checks your emails for spam trigger words before sending it. Alternatively, you can also use ISnotSPAM, a free tool which scores your emails for deliverability and see if they are likely to trigger spam filters.

Simply send your email to the email address displayed on their website, and then click on the View Your Report button.

The report will show you the criteria they looked at, along with your score and whether you passed or failed the test.

For a list of spam trigger words, check out this comprehensive list.

If you are sending text-only emails, you don’t have to worry about this. However, you may want to send HTML emails as well as a text-only version. That way, you can include some branding elements that make your emails more memorable (which helps with engagement).

We’ve actually tested plain text versus branded emails with our email list, and found that the branded emails actually get higher engagement. So it’s definitely a good thing to try with your own list.

However, you need to follow some best practices for sending HTML emails so they don’t get marked as spam:

• Use a maximum width of 600-800 pixels. This will make them look good in most email clients.
• Keep your HTML code as simple and clean as possible. If you are using a template from a reputable email service provider, you should be OK.
• Keep your image-to-text ratio low. Images are OK to include in your email marketing campaigns, but never send image-only emails with no text.
• Optimize your images for email by compressing them first. Don’t use super high resolution images or other media with a large file size.
• Don’t use obscure fonts. Stick with fonts that work across platforms, like Arial, Verdana, Georgia and Times New Roman.
• Optimize for mobile. Make sure your emails are readable and load quickly on mobile devices, and that your links can be pressed easily with a thumb.

Zoho offers professional email hosting that supports a range of web apps for business. It’s an impressive suite of webmails’ that support ad-free, clean and fast interface. The best solution for everything from accounting to CRM, you can get started with it up to 50 free users, or pay just a nominal amount for more storage and features. It has got features like multi-level folders, drag, and drop, threaded view, tabbed views, mass selection, filtered views, anti-spam, instant chat, SAML authentication, and more.

The free option in Gmail is already popular among users, but it’s not good for business purpose. You can get a personalized email address via Googles’ App Engine that’s one of the best options for getting your own email address. All you need to do is to make an account on App Engine, add your domain to the account, and then you’ll get a single Google Apps account with your domain. It’s really worth for those who want the Gmail experience. You get everything that you expect from Google Drive like 30GB of storage, shared calendars, video meetings, business-grade security controls, and real support.

BigRock, provide with up to 10 free email accounts with its most basic plan. They offer intuitive interface design powered by OpenXchange that can be accessed from iPhone and Android Smartphone. The advanced spam protection and anti-virus are the part of their email hosting package. Along with this, you’ll be given 24/7 security monitoring and back-up service for all your emails. Some of the key features offered by BigRock are 5GB storage & backup, 100% uptime, online address book, full HTML email support, DNS control, vacation auto-responders, and easy to use control panel.

Microsoft’s Office 365 offer business-class email that you can access from a web browser using Outlook Web App. Email account users get the full power of exchange in their own domain, with all the configuration options you’d want. You can enable secure access and sharing of documents with 10GB baseline storage along with 500MB of storage per user. To get access to its full applications, you have to pay a nominal amount, and get installed all Office applications in your account at Officecom Setup.

Atmail offers email hosting services and one of the best alternatives to Google Apps. Its interface is more effective than the Apple’s iCloud even it offers the features you’d expect from Gmail personalized email accounts. It costs very less and helps to reduce the expenses of business email while maintaining high standards. It offers every much better option you’d think of such as Exchange ActiveSync, IMAP, and POP3, One-click iOS provisioning, vCard support, multiple languages, multiple webmail theme and tools to manage the whole team.