It doesn’t matter what type of company you have or what industry you’re in, email marketing needs to be a priority for your business.

Spam filters do a great job keeping out most of the junk, these advances in spam detection have had the unforeseen side-effect of making it increasingly difficult for small businesses to reach their target audience with their offers and promotions.

Here are 8 proven tips that will help you keep your emails from landing in the spam folder.

Segment your audience

Save yourself transmission rates by segmenting out recipients that never open your emails. This is done by updating fields for actions like last open, last click, first, and last sent. This makes it easy to create triggers within your emails that will protect the integrity of your lists.

Stay relevant

You need to focus on the content of your messages. Ask yourself these questions before you hit send: Why are you sending this email? Is this message adding value to the subscriber?

If you don’t have a clear answer to these, you should probably re-evaluate the message.

Don’t send content just to say hello or provide a friendly reminder that your company exists. Your subscribers don’t care about this.

Remove bad addresses

Another way to say this is, stay on top of your lists. If an email address no longer exists, stop sending that address emails. If you change your email service provider, take steps to ensure you’re migrating clean lists.

What happens if you don’t stay on top of your lists? When you send a high volume of emails to a high percentage of invalid addresses, you’re email service provider will make the determination that you’re not a legitimate sender and will send your emails to the spam folder.

Set clear expectations

One of the first emails that you send should be a short introductory email that sets expectations about the content that you plan to send. To the best extent possible, make this information available before audiences describe.

Master your subject lines

A successful email marketing campaign starts with the subject line. You could have the best promotional message in the world, but nobody will see it if they don’t open the message.

It’s in your best interest to keep your subject line as short as possible. Research shows that email subjects between 1 and 20 characters yield the highest open rates, regardless of what type of email you’re sending.

Read More: 5 Tips for Subject Lines for Your Cold Emails

Review your “opt-ins”

Many deliverability issues can be traced back to the origins of data collection. You only want customers on your email list that aren’t going to cause you problems. Which means, make sure you provide a way of opting out or unsubscribing.

Choose the right service provider

Work with a partner that has a positive track record. There are thousands of marketing automation and email marketing companies out there some are bound to be spammy, with dubious histories.

Certify your IP

This will help you get on the good side of many email providers. It will likely cost thousands of dollars a year, so make sure to do a rigorous cost/benefit analysis.

By keeping your emails honest and your data clean, you’re building trust for your brand, business, service or product, while generating revenue.