Every morning, like clockwork, I have breakfast, settle down with a cup of joe and go through the emails awaiting me in my inbox. Every single time I've done this, I have found spam there watching for me. And that's just counting the ones inside my inbox. Ignore the several dozen (or hundred) that actually got filtered and delivered to my junk pile. I despise spam. And there are more than a few folk who'd concur with me. :)

I'm pretty sure that most of you will agree with me when I say: there's far too much spam being sent nowadays. The good news is that spam filters have grown to be pretty darned sophisticated and, when established correctly, catch nearly all of spammed messages. The bad news is that sometimes they filter the wrong emails: your legitimate "opted-in" emails that potential (or active) customers have asked to get. In this article we're going to walk through some of the common pitfalls that an email sender makes and how you are able to stay away from them.

The first pitfall to protect yourself from is sending your messages to an outdated list. This is the most popular mistakes made, and also the most simple. Exactly why is this? Well...for more than one reason, really. Everybody, like you and me, change over time. And their wants and requirements change with time too. Maybe the subscriber was super enthusiastic about learning a little more about garden gnomes 6 months ago, but has since moved on to pet rocks. We rarely discover the explanations why most people lose interest. Its just important that we realize that they do (and definitely will).

Yet another common reason we might send to an old list or subscribers happens because we don't put an "unsubscribe" link towards the end of our messages and solicitations. Adding this one thing to your emails will solve this matter more often than not. If we allow our subscribers to tell us when they're not interested in hearing from us anymore, they'll usually tell us. It's best if we make it easy for our subscribers to opt out. Why? Because this helps keep our emails from being reported as spam!

Another frequent mistake is forgetting to make sure that your emails are presented consistently across various email clients. Not all email programs are created equal, and this means not all email clients displays the same email identically. In fact, there are some email programs that do a very, VERY poor job of parsing html (what your templates are likely designed with). So what's the fix? There is no simple answer. But probably the most effective step that you can take to prevent this would be to use very simple,and personalized email templates. The bottom line is, if your emails are ugly your messages will likely be deleted. If your subscriber is in a nasty mood, then it will most likely be reported as spam.

Next pitfall: sending messages with inconsistent frequency. How often then, should you send emails to your list? I don't know! And you don't either. The only one that knows how frequently the subscriber wants to hear from you is the subscriber. :) So provide the subscriber some options when subscribing to your list. Monthly and bi-monthly should be the standard. If you are able to swing it, offer daily and weekly intervals too. The subscriber will like you much more since you've given them some control and they, in turn, will possibly not report your emails as spam. Every person wins!

Boring content or presentation is an additional email sender "faux pas".Your readers are searhing for reasons to stop reading your content...keep them engaged! If the subscribers start to lose interest before finishing the first paragraph, then your email stream is most likely on its way to a spam report.

The last wonderful mistake an email sender makes is sending irrelevent content. This is huge! If you own a site that sells more than one product or that sells to more than one demographic, then you may very well be making this mistake right now. Making use of your mass email service, generate categories for your subscribers based on whatever charceristics you want. Then use these groups to send highly relevant messages. With this done, you can then take one email and customize it for each individual group. Now you can send super-targeted offers across a very broad base of potential customers.