A couple of decades ago, spam was nothing more than mystery meat in a can on the grocery shelf. Today, spam has moved from the grocery store to the email inbox, flooding our inboxes with promises of fast weight loss, easy cash, and other intriguing promises. Unfortunately, emails from genuine companies can end up in the limbo of a spam folder. If your email newsletters are being labeled as spam, your intended audience isn’t reading your content and you’re not seeing an ROI on your email marketing campaign. So what email mistakes land you in the spam folder? Here are five that are guaranteed to turn your email into spam:

1. Problematic subject lines

Subject lines like “Double Your Income” or “Fast Cash” are some of the most commonly caught by spam filters. Instead of making lofty promises of rags to riches in your subject line, pique your reader’s’ interest with a hint of what’s in store if they open the email. Another good tactic is to personalize the email specifically to them by using their name in the subject line.

2. Problematic sending addresses

Email addresses that aren’t connected to a specific person in your organization may be more likely to be labeled as spam. Addresses like noreply@yourdomain will probably land you in the spam folder. FlashIssue offers a simple solution by allowing you to choose your sender address straight from our application.

3. Old email lists

Email lists expire quickly. A good email contact last month does not necessarily ensure a good email contact this month. Plan to regularly clean your lists and engage your subscribers to make sure the majority of your emails are not getting bounced.

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4. Poor content

Content marketers really should have the content thing down, shouldn’t we? But too often we let poor content slip by because, let’s face it, we just don’t have time to be perfect. Unfortunately for time-strapped email marketers, poor content is another mistake that will get you caught by spam filters. Single images with no text or invalid HTML tags are just a few content issues that can get you in trouble.

5. ALL CAPS

We know you’re excited about your product, so excited you feel like doing the email equivalent of screaming from the housetop: using all caps. All caps, though, are a big pet peeve of spam filters. They don’t like them, they never have, and they never will, so do yourself and your readers a favor and use your caps lock responsibly.

Conclusion

Your email newsletter doesn’t have to be labeled as spam. Avoid these five mistakes, and you’ll avoid the dreaded spam folder.