Tip of the week 54 - How to ask the email receivers to whitelist your email address?
There are days in the life of an email marketer when the carefully-crafted email campaign decides to call the spam folder as its only home, even after following some of the best email practices.
The common reason for this would be that the contact details of the sender might not have been whitelisted by the receiver, which means the sender's email address is not added to the list of approved contacts by the receiver.
So, the first step to attain a safe inbox landing is to get whitelisted by the receiver and we have wrapped up some tips to achieve the same.
1) Spread the word
The customer base of some business might not be aware of email jargon such as whitelisting. There are also some customers who will have sufficient idea about multiple email terminology and yet might not consider using the same. So, before placing the request to your receivers' to whitelist your email address it is advised to analyse the customer base and then frequently spread the word about whitelisting to customers who are not aware about it through blog post, emails and social media post.
2) Ask and you shall receive
Once you spread awareness about whitelisting, its time to gently ask your receivers to add your contact to their trusted senders' list. Ensure that you use universal language and gentle tone while requesting your receivers instead of directly using the term whitelisting. One can also lay down the benefit of whitelisting the contacts and also provide a link that navigates them to the page where the detailed instruction on whitelisting will be given.
3) Request, but at the right time
A request made at the right time has a better impact and gives greater result.So, the right time to request the receivers is preferably after a consistent increase in open or click rates which can be achieved by sending an email campaign for initial on-boarding and customer engagement.
Because, only at this stage, the receivers will be eager enough to look forward for your email campaign and will happily accept the request laid down to receive the email campaign in their inbox consistently.
4) vCard is the key
Make the whitelisting process a hassle-free one for the receivers by making use of Zoho Campaigns vCard merge tag, which acts like e-business card.The sender has to attach vCard along with their email campaign so that later on they will be instantly added in the receivers' contact list when the receiver clicks on the vCard merge tag link.
So, do try out the above best practices and safely escape the spam trap!
Cheers,
Vinaya.M