I love email marketing. But dear Lord, the spam algorithms are so overprotective these days that even the most honest emails can easily end up in spam.

The challenge? How to make sure your new customer, and their inbox, perceive you as a real and valuable human being?

My take. I set up email automation where whenever a new customer purchases a goodie from my shop, a message arrives in their inbox (hopefully) with an honest “thank you” and a small discount voucher.

No links, no attachments. Just the value in two sentences.

But to get the voucher, they‘ll need to reply. This is powerful because once they reply, you are sure they are humans, and it also trains the spam algorithm to create a friendly link between you and the receiver, so you don‘t end up in spam next time. Moreover, once they reply, you reply to them back with the voucher attached, but also with a question to further extend the conversation, thus to further train the spam algorithm to make sure you don‘t even end up in the Promotions tab, but directly to their inbox.

Powerful, right? Well, I‘ll see, in a month or two.

How about you? What‘s your approach?