How to keep your email promos from tripping spam filters.

• We use email marketing quite a bit for product promotions. We also send a lot of unsolicited shopping emails and while we have a pretty good response rate, we believe they could be better. What tips can you give me to ensure our email marketing campaigns don't trip spam filters and are as effective as possible to all users?

Answer: The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 allows sending unsolicited commercial email provided that the email clearly identifies itself as an ad and provides recipients with the sender's contact information and a clear way to opt-out from future emails. Furthermore, the effectiveness of targeted email campaigns continues to be one of the few bright spots that retailers are finding in this current economic slowdown. The benefits of smartly targeted email promotions are numerous and include lower costs, higher average conversion rates and ample tracking feedback—all of which make email an essential component of successful online marketing.

In fact, according to Jupiter Research, effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenue and 18 times the profits of traditional broadcast mailers. Add that to a recent Forrester Research note that showed over $250 billion in business-to-consumer revenue was generated directly through email promotions in 2008 and you can certainly make the case that email is a stronger marketing tool now than ever before.

Unfortunately, the average consumer receives over 300 emails a week, of which 62% are typically tagged as spam by spam filters, bulk folders or the report spam function offered by their email clients. Most major ISPs provide rigorous spam fighting tools which apply preset criteria to all incoming email at the server level to weed out most spam. All email is reviewed—and, if not already on a previous safe...