What I'm about to show you will increase the number of people that read your email significantly. (I'm talking about legitimate opt-in or one-to-one emails here, not spam.)

Many email clients will allow you to filter out "junk" based on a set of rules. For example, anything that starts with "ADV:" or includes such text as "this email is sent in compliance with" can be filtered out and sent directly to your trash file.

If you're like me and get tons of email every day, this can be quite useful. I just don't have time to read about every time some South American pharmacy is running a special on Viagra.

The problem is that these rules are not always accurate. That is, sometimes these "junk email" rules filter out important email as well.

Surprisingly, these rules are not very forgiving at times. If I were to write such rules I would do so under the assumption that it is better to let some spam slip through than to erroneously filter out something important. But, we're not so lucky. Many of the junk filtering rules are valid, but others are not.

You should comb through any of the automated follow up emails or newsletters you send out and remove anything that might trigger a spam filter. Since some of these rules are quite arcane, it is probably best to send the email to yourself and receive it with a client that has junk-filtering rules turned on. I've found that the Outlook junk filtering rules are the harshest, so you might try that. If the email is not filtered, you're probably OK. If it is, play with it until the email is accepted.

Here are some things to look for that you may not expect. The following will trigger junk email filters in Outlook and keep your email from being read:

Of course, there are quite a few other rules that will trigger junk email filters, but these are ones that could easily trip you up. Just remember to test the mail yourself to make sure. Doing this will significantly increase the number of people that actually read the mail you send them.