“How to Get Your Emails Past
the Spam Filters, Opened,
and Read”
by Eldo Barkhuizen
To get past the spam filters, leave out, for example, the following from your email subject lines:
- $, £
- !
- words in ALL CAPS
- sale
- new
- investment
- power
- powerful
- maximize
- profit
- money
- extra income
- opportunity
- special
- buy
How to Get Your
Emails Opened
To write an effective email – ones that gets opened and responded to – you must keep to these important basics:
• “FROM” LINE – show clearly who you are (preferably your personal name, not your business name), or the receiver may think your email’s spam and delete it.
• SUBJECT LINE – the most important part of your email (like the teaser on an envelope, or a sales letter headline).
Curiosity subject lines work best. Something like “John, this idea might ...”
Inserting the person’s first name in the subject line also sometimes helps to get your email opened.
Also, leaving the sentence unfinished (ending with an ellipsis) creates emotional tension (the so-called “Zeigarnik effect”), as the recipient has to open the email to discover what it’s about.
And the word “this” in the subject line also helps to get your emails opened.
How to Get Your
Emails Read
1. KEEP BODY TEXT SHORT – people have little time to read their barrage of emails. So keep yours to around 450 words max – or it may be deleted unread.
2. USE AN “INVERTED PYRAMID” – state your most important points at the beginning, less important further down.
3. KEEP LINES SHORT – keep to around 65 characters (including spaces).
4. MAKE THEM SCANNABLE – use subheads, bullet lists, white space etc. to break the text up.
5. USE GOOD LAYOUT – use, for example, lines of equals signs (=====), and so on, to set off headings or displayed text, to make your email more appealing and more readable.
6. USE SHORT WORDS, a variety of SHORT AND LONGER SENTENCES, and SHORT PARAGRAPHS (see the classic W. Strunk, Jr, and E.B. White, The Elements of Style, for pointers on good, punchy writing) in each email.
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