Most of us know that email can quickly and efficiently lift website traffic, sales and enhance your relationship with your subscribers. We also know that spammers make legitimate email marketing a lot harder than it should be. Blasted spammers, right?

But what happens when bad things happen to good emailers? In other words, what happens when your CAN-SPAM and best practice compliant campaigns get through spam filters to the inbox but are perceived as spam by your valuable customers?

There are several ways this can happen to well intended, permission-based email marketers.

Content and images
While recent studies have de-emphasized the importance of content when evaluating what and why emails get re-routed to spam folders, the email recipient will still say content is king. Most email subscribers will initially look at your email and decide if it is of interest to them or even if it appears to be spam. They are not afraid to act on it either. A study from the Email Sender and Provider Coalition revealed more than 8 out of 10 email users have used the "report spam" button in their email client interfaces.

This means the "from" and "subject lines" lead the way in recipients' decision on whether your email deserves their attention or should be considered spam. In fact, 73 percent make the decision to click on the "report spam" or "junk" button using the "from" line, according to the Email Sender and Provider Coalition.

While CAN-SPAM is black and white in terms of what to do and what not to do, your subscribers likely don’t follow the same rules in terms of deciding what spam is. John Engler, vice president of UnsubCentral, stated, "Just because a marketer is technically complying with CAN-SPAM, authentication standards and other ISP mandated rules that help them get into the inbox, doesn't mean their campaigns are going to be instantly recognized or embraced by the recipients if the recipients don't think the message is relevant."

Jordan Cohen of Epsilon recently blogged that some of the top ISPs and email providers are moving to a looser definition of spam than is currently held. According to Cohen, a Yahoo! representative said, "Operationally, we define spam as whatever consumers don't want in their inbox."

A misleading or even disappointing subject line could also cause recipients to view your email as spam. How do you avoid this? Simple: make sure your subject line is truly representative of what your email entails. For example, don’t put "Free Shipping" in the subject line if that email has no mention of this offer.

Content with overly promotional terms, typos or poorly written or confusing copy can also anger the recipient. Images for many recipients may be blocked, which could make your subscriber think the email is spam because of the red Xs in their email client. One way to avoid that is ensure you have backup text and a relatively clear email if the images are suppressed.
 
Author notes: G. Simms Jenkins is founder and principal of BrightWave Marketing, an Atlanta-based email marketing and customer relationship services firm. Read full bio.