I recently read an article by the same name discussing an e-mail marketing campaign executed by United Airlines. The campaign asked recipients to add United's From Address to their address books. Why? There are two fantastic reasons for doing this. First, to avoid the "Junk Mail" folder and ensure the message will be delivered to the Inbox and; second, so that all images will be downloaded and displayed automatically with the message.
You may be asking, "What if my messages are already going to the 'Junk Mail' folder?" There are two possibilities for overcoming this obstacle.
If you are sending e-mail to multiple recipients through your personal mail software, many mail servers will consider this SPAM. Most mail servers have a threshold of 10-15 recipients per message. If you have more than 15 recipients in your To (CC, BCC) Address field, servers will flag your message as SPAM and, possibly, reject the message. Therefore, if you are sending newsletters to multiple recipients, consider using an e-mail marketing provider such as VerticalResponse, iContact, ConstantContact or SwiftPage. When a mail server recognizes that you are using a paid marketing service, they, in most cases, will not consider your message as SPAM. This is true for most mail software as well.
Many people will occassionally 'scan' through their junk folder for messages that could be possibly relevant. In these cases, if they recognize the sender (i.e. you or your business), they will then mark your message as not junk.
In the end, it is still important to encourage your recipients to add your e-mail address to their contacts.
