Sending guidelines

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Sending guidelines
Read this guide before sending large volume of emails. By following these best practices you will increase your opening rate and avoid falling into spam.
The best practices to send mail merge with Gmail
Mailmeteor sends emails directly from your Gmail account and adds a sending delay between each email sent. It will maximize your chances to land in the primary inbox and prevent your emails from falling into spam compared to other email sending platforms. However, you have to abide by Google's anti-spam policies to maximize your email deliverability and send bulk emails in Gmail without getting blocked:
1) Warm-up your email account
If your Gmail account is new or if you have not sent a lot of emails recently, we recommend sending emails to a small list of recipients at first (50 recipients for example). Slowly increase your sending volume over time.
2) Don't send too many emails at once
For large campaigns, try sending messages to one group of recipients, wait 24 hours, and then send to another group. Stagger mass communications over several days. Using Mailmeteor's Autopilot feature, you can set a maximum numbers of emails to send per day and define throttling, that is the space between emails.
3) Make sure your contact list is clean
If your campaigns have a lot of bounces, Google will detect that your database is outdated or not legitimate. We strongly recommended you to keep your database as fresh and clean as possible. The best is to collect your email list over time and make sure people agree to receive emails from you. Don't buy lists online. Note: if we detect spamming behavior, we reserve the right to block your account.
4) Review your email content and formatting
Anti-spam filters can check email content and formatting to ensure it does not contain phishing or scam. You may check the following:
Keep emailing formatting simple: we recommend you to keep formatting as simple as possible.
Your subject line should be short and not misleading
Your email content should be short and concise
Avoid using UPPERCASE
Avoid using exclamations marks!!
Avoid using a combination of fonts or colors, such as red
Check your spelling and grammar
Review your email headers: these include the Date, From, To, and Subject of your email. Spam filters will check these fields to ensure there is nothing unusual there. For example, the name you use in the greetings should correspond to your recipient's name in the To field.
Structure of your email (HTML code): your email is made of the HTML language. Unstructured HTML code will be suspect to spam filters. We recommend you to create your email directly in the Mailmeteor or Gmail text editor instead of copy-pasting text from elsewhere like Word, Google Docs or using an HTML template you've found on the internet.
5) Personalize your emails
When you are sending emails in bulk, it’s generally a good idea to personalize the emails. Personalizing subject might certainly increase your open rate. 
Mailmeteor lets you personalize your email subject
6) Provide a clear way to opt-out
Your recipients must have the ability to opt out of every email you send out. The way to opt-out can be a closing formula like "let me know if you don't wish to receive more emails". It needs to be clear & when people require you to opt-out, you cannot ignore them. Adding an unsubscribe link in your emails if you are running opt-in marketing campaigns is recommended.
If your email still ends up in spam despite these advices, try the following:
Remove all links from your email
Remove any embedded images or logo
Remove formatting, use plain-text instead
Disable tracking before sending your emails
Why are my emails going to spam with Gmail?
Spam are all unsolicited or undesired emails. To keep account safe and prevent spam, email providers like Gmail have developed anti-spam filters. If they detect something unusual, your emails may land in the spam folder. Applying the best practices described above will help you avoid getting flagged as spam.
Sometimes a perfectly legit email can end up in the spam folder for no obvious reason. Unfortunately this can happen 
Why Google blocked my emails?
Google will block your emails if your sending meet one of these conditions: 
10 recipients in your campaign marked your email as spam 
10 emails fell into your recipients' spam folder
In that case, try understanding the origin of the situation by using this guide. Fix the issues and re-try a few days later on a smaller campaign to see if the problem persists.
Legal considerations about spam
Spam laws vary from one country to another, you need to check the applicable spam law in your country before sending campaigns. 
Using Mailmeteor for automating emailing campaign is right and legal, but spamming is definitely not. We recommend you to abide by simple guidelines, such as the one established in the CAN-SPAM act.
How to comply to CAN-SPAM?
CAN-SPAM is a law that establishes the rules for commercial email and messages, gives recipients the right to have a business stop emailing them, and outlines the penalties in case the law is violated. We cannot but recommend following these few rules:
Do's
✅  Tell the recipients where you are located. Include a valid physical business address in every email you send out.
✅  Use clear "From," "To," and "Reply to" language that accurately reflects who you are. You must state clearly that your message is an ad if its purpose is commercial.
✅  Provide a clear way to opt out of every email you send out, and honor the unsubscribe promptly.
Don'ts
❌   Don't sell or transfer any email addresses to another list.
❌   Don't make it hard to unsubscribe from emails (avoid a paywall or several steps to unsubscribe)
❌   Don't use deceptive subject lines in your emails 
How to avoid the Gmail spam filters
To sum up, here are some important things to keep in mind when sending a Gmail mail merge:
1) Take care of your email and domain reputation. If your emails have been flagged as spams in the past, spam filters may your future email campaigns as spam. Your domain can also be affected and end up in blocklists. We thus recommend you to keep your email campaigns clean and follow the rules described in this guide so as not to harm your reputation. This includes warming up your account, sending emails progressively instead of all at once, not sending unsolicited emails and keeping your email list up to date.
2) Check your email content and formatting. Email providers may scan your email subject line and content to ensure it does not contain phishing or scam. We recommend you to avoid spam words and keep formatting as simple as possible: avoid uppercases, combination of fonts or colors, abusive use of exclamation marks, ensure that your email structure is clean.
3)  Keep your email activity as normal as possible. Your activity will be considered suspicious if you start sending tons of emails out of the blue to people you never interacted with in the past. Anti-spam filters would consider this activity unusual and block your emails straight away. Start by sending low volumes of emails. Once you are confident with the results, increase your emailing volume progressively. 
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Last modified 13d ago
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Contents
The best practices to send mail merge with Gmail
Why are my emails going to spam with Gmail?
Why Google blocked my emails?
Legal considerations about spam
How to avoid the Gmail spam filters