New entrepreneurs starting out their businesses should consider using email to promote their products and services. It's easy. Too easy. It's important to start on the right foot, applying email marketing best practices from the get-go.​

It used to be that ISPs filtered your emails based on their content. They still do but not as much as they used to. Spammers learned how to game the system so that their get-rich-quick emails and 50% off Viagra emails still ended up in your inbox. Over the years, ISPs have started using advanced artificial intelligence to profile what a bad sender looks like – which is why you're seeing A LOT less spam in your INBOX than you were seeing maybe 10 years ago. Therefore, the key to staying out of the junk email doghouse is to not fit the profile of a spammer.

Here's 5 things you need to know about getting your emails through to your customers, and staying out of the Junk Email Doghouse.

Key 1: Your Sending Reputation
More than WHAT you say in your email, WHO you are makes the biggest difference between landing your email in the inboxes of your customers or being sentenced to the Junk Email Doghouse. The most important key to getting your emails to the inbox is to avoid unintentionally fitting the profile of a spammer. If you're a new entrepreneur starting out your business, the most important takeaway you need to know is this: your web site actually influences whether your emails make it to the inbox or into the Junk Email Doghouse.

When you send an email, you always must include a "from" email address. ISPs will look at the domain of your "from" email address (that's everything that comes to the right of the '@' symbol) and check to see whether that domain is legit. They have access to all sorts of databases (Gmail has its own -- no surprise). The first thing they'll check is whether the domain even exists. Spammers and phishers (con artists who want to trick you into divulging personal information) will just make up an email address with a fake domain that looks like a legitimate one (e.g. 'sales@rolexwatches.com' instead of 'sales@rolex.com'). If you don't have a web site, then your emails are already at a disadvantage of making it to the inbox.

Assuming the "from" email address' domain does exist, the spam filters will check how old is that domain. Remember -- spammers are all about getting in and getting out before they get caught. Registering a domain is so cheap. It's easy for spammers to register a domain on Monday just to send you an email on Tuesday. A domain that's only been around for a few days is a dead give-away of a spammer. If you're a new entrepreneur who's just launched your web site, I recommend you wait at least 30 days before you send your first email.

Spam filters will also check the site traffic to the domain. A web site with little to no traffic is the sure sign of a fake web site that's only created as a scam. A web site with lots of traffic is the sign of a legit business. When you're starting out your business, you're going to have low traffic to your web site. That's a given, and it's OK. Use your email campaigns to get your prospects and customers interested in your web site. The more consistently you send emails, the more consistently people will click through to your web site. The more traffic you have to your web site, the higher the chance your emails will make it into the inbox, and not the Junk Email Doghouse.

Key 2: Send More Email ... REALLY!
At a minimum, you should be sending your customers at least 1 email per week. I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I've met who are afraid to send too many emails for fear of turning off their customers. Unfortunately, they take their worry to the extreme and hardly send any! Just like with any new relationship, never calling (or hardly ever calling) is just as bad as calling every hour! You need to strike a good balance. If you're just starting out with a small email list (less than 500 contacts) then once a week is fine. But the larger your email list, the more frequently you should send each week.

ISPs pay close attention to how frequently you send your emails. Someone who hardly sends at all fits the profile of a spammer who shows up clear out of the blue to blast to millions of people, and then disappears into the shadows. Even if you only send to a handful of your contacts, the fact that you send regularly is proof that you're a legitimate business in it for the long haul.

Key 3: Subscriber Engagement
Like it or not, ISPs are monitoring your personal email account along with everyone else's. Your ISP keeps track of every single email you read, and it keeps track of every single link in an email that you click. Most emails that spammer send is ... well ... spam. 🙂 For spammers, it's all just a numbers game. They send emails to millions of email addresses. A paltry 1% response rate sent to a million addresses means 10,000 responses. Not bad!

Lot of entrepreneurs starting out with email marketing tell me they don't know where to start. I get it. Sending emails for the sake of sending emails is wrong. It's important that you learn the fundamental techniques that all professional copywriters use and apply them to your emails. You want your subscribers reading your emails. You want them clicking links in your emails and going to your web site. You need to learn how to write email content that your subscribers care about and look forward to reading.

The one thing you absolutely don't want is a spam complaint. Spam complaints are the sure way to "go directly to the Junk Email Doghouse. Do Not Pass Go." -- or worse, get totally blocked by an ISP. Spammers never ask you for your permission to send an email to you. They buy a list of email addresses and blast away. That's why you must always ask permission first, before you send a single email to that email address. You want your email recipients to know who you are, so they don't flag your email as spam.

You should always send a "welcome" email as soon as you receive an email address. I've met many entrepreneurs who use email sign up lists when they exhibit at conferences. But they have yet to send them a single email. I advise them to just burn those lists and start all over again. The longer you wait between acquiring an email address to sending it an email, the higher the chance the recipient will forget who you are and flag your email as spam.

Key 4: Sender Reputation
The service provider that you’re using to send your emails also plays an important role to avoiding the Junk Email Doghouse. You want to make sure that you’re not found guilty by association. By that I mean, you want to avoid using the same service providers that spammers use to send their emails.

One way to determine if your email service provider is reputable is to look at its Terms and Conditions page. Make sure that they take a strong stance against abusing their platform to send spam emails. Some email service providers will go so far as to tell you in their T&Cs what is their allowed threshold for spam. For example, this service provider’s “0.2% overall spam complaint rate, and 0.1% spam complaint rate from any 1 ISP" is proof that they take a hard stand against any using their platform to send spam emails.

Key 5: Sender Infrastructure
Every good email service provider has a good sending infrastructure. Every reputable mail service provider includes key pieces of information at the beginning of every email that they send on your behalf. There’re different digital signatures that your email service provider will stamp all their emails with so they can prove you have given them permission to send emails on your behalf. The ISPs validate those digital signatures.
Be sure to check if your email service provider has this feature. Usually they'll call it "domain authentication" settings. If they have it, but you're not using it, you should do so asap. If they don't have it, then you probably want to find a different provider who does.

Follow these 5 keys to staying out of the Junk Email Doghouse, and you'll find that email is one of the best ways to promote your business, capture sales from your leads, and encourage repeat buys from your customers.