We manage press releases and newsletter distribution for a number of global clients and yet I am often surprised by the sheer number of people who ask me how we get our emails through given the likelihood of email filters automatically screening messages as 'spam' even when an address has been approved.

We use a sophisticated mass email distribution system to deliver our emails - I think you need to these days if you are sending bulk email (not least if you get a spam complaint and you need to prove compliance with various laws - US and Australian spam laws being quite different) but also so you can check who opens/clicks through an email and who forwards it. Clients expect this sort of information when you are reporting results of a PR campaign.

In terms of general tips to people perhaps the following will assist:

- a lot of email systems reject html emails so you should always offer a 'text only' option when people register for a newsletter

- check your copy (wording). Racing immediately falls into the 'risk' category due to the frequency of 'flame' words in most press releases/newsletters eg. 'millions of dollars', 'gambling', 'stud' etc. Be conscious of what words might trigger a spam filter (our system automatically releases a pre-send spam analysis to let us know what the likelihood is of a message being rejected). Be especially careful with attached images as these will usually always trigger a spam alert. Try and embed them if possible.

- someone in your marketing/admin team should always monitor e-mail delivery. Who is getting the email, who is opening it, what ISP's are rejecting it (if it's a lot then it suggests your copy is not passing the spam threshold and needs to be re-drafted)

- make sure an eNewsletter or email can easily be unsubscribed from

- regularly clean your lists. We do this after every 3rd email distribution - if emails are undeliverable then they are cleansed from the lists. Similarly if someone does not open an email on more than 3 occasions it should also be unsubscribed.

- update your contact lists. People move jobs and change email addresses.