Spam — everyone gets it, but most people don’t want it. Spam is email or other marketing materials that customers do not ask for but are sent to them anyway. Most of the time, spam is irritating to your clients, and it can give you a bad reputation among your customers. You might think it’s a good way to get a hold of your customers and potential clients but in fact, it can drive people away. Here are a few things you never knew about spam, along with some SEO marketing tips for communicating with your customers without spamming them.

The Spam Filter Could be Hiding Your Messages

The spam filter is a great function for people who do not want their inbox jammed with useless messages, but it can also filter out the things customers really want to read!

Most filters use semantic indexing to find and hide spam. Semantic indexing looks at the content of a message and searches for commonly used words and phrases found in spam. Rather than trying to get around semantic indexing, you should make your email content useful and relevant to your customers.

Knowing that most people have a spam filter, make sure your clients can see the messages they actually want. If you have a newsletter or other messaging that your clients can opt into, remind them to approve your email address to keep your emails out of the spam filter.

Spam Has Legal Guidelines

SEO marketing professionals should know the laws around spam. There are large fines involved if you break the rules!

When you send commercial emails, be sure to give your users a way to unsubscribe, and make sure that all of the content in your email is true, including the subject line and names and addresses involved. For more information on spam law in the United States, SEO marketing professionals should look up CAN-SPAM.

There are Better Marketing Strategies Than Spam

Spam might seem like the easy way out but when you’re up against semantic indexing and a spam filter, SEO marketing teams should find a different way to send messages. Focus on sharing content that will make your customers want to read your emails! Try using popular keywords and phrases within your website to draw in new clients, and keep your information relevant and useful.