How To Tell If Your Emails Are Going To Spam

Your Domain Authentication Matters

Authentication allows the receiving server to confirm the senders identity. It is very important to secure your brand, build a good reputation and increase the deliverability of your emails to reach their destination.

More simply, domain authentication records indicate how healthy the process between your computer and the targeted computer is.

You can check your authentication records with the GlockApps spam testing tool. It allows the receiving server to confirm the senders identity. Authentication is very important to secure your brand and build a good reputation.

There are three primary methods of authentication:

1. SPF : it validates that a message was sent from an IP address that was authorized to send messages on the behalf of the indicated sending domain.

2. DKIM : it authenticates an email using public-key encryption. It signs a message in a way that is difficult to forge, proving that the message is sent from the indicated sending domain.

3. DMARC : it ensures that an email is properly authenticated against established DKIM and SPF standards and that any fraudulent activity that may be coming from legitimate domains is blocked.

Dont Go Overboard With Attachments

One of the golden rules of email marketing is to avoid adding attachments to your emails at all costs. While attachments are absolute babes when it comes to personal correspondence , they can be detrimental for email marketing campaigns.

The reason why attachments have such a bad reputation is the rise in attachment-based email viruses. In a number of cases, attachments can pose a potential security threat and, therefore, be shielded away by email servers. Even if your email manages to make it past the email server, spam filters in Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and Yahoo! Are most likely to block your attachment completely, affecting your email campaigns deliverability in a major way.

Its not just the EMS that view email attachments as something bad. Recipients, too, are not very fond of attachments and rarely open marketing emails that contain those. This means, by adding an attachment you voluntarily limit your emails open rates!

Domain Reputation Is Poor

Your domain reputation plays a vital role in your email deliverability. To borrow an analogy from the finance world, it is a lot like a credit score for your email domain. If it is high, you will get good deliverability.

That said, let’s deconstruct what are the factors that contribute to it.

Using a free email address as your From Email address

If you are not using an ESP then you will need your own domain to send emails. The reason you can not use a free email address inside a 3rd party system is that they have strict DMARC policies.

If you have your own domain you can set DMARC policies that will tell receiving servers how to handle emails that have failed the DMARC check.

Inconsistent Email Volume

This again is the typical behavior of a Spammer. Also, can you think of a legitimate business that will suddenly increase their email volume by 100x?

Sudden changes in email volume are always considered suspicious in the email world.

People marking emails as SPAM

This should not come as a surprise. If people mark your emails as SPAM, your domain reputation will get affected.

When your subscribers click on Mark as SPAM, a SPAM complaint is logged by mailbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, etc. notifying ESP’s about the same.

Since SPAM complaints are an explicit user signal about unsolicited emails .

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Text Clearness Grammar And Spelling

Proofread your messages! Checking for errors before sending can save you from unforgivable mistakes. Make sure that your message is clear to your subscribers. Anti-spam algorithms can detect unreadable text. Grammar and spelling are extremely important too. You can check text correctness in special services, like Grammarly.

Why Spam Is A Problem For Email Marketers

Estimates indicate that as many as 60 billion spam emails will be sent every day between 2019 and 2023. Obviously, users dont appreciate that flood of spam. However, this is also a major problem for email marketers. Up to 20 percent of emails will never make it to the recipients inbox, preventing you from reaching your audience.

With email delivering an average Return on Investment of 122 percent, its important to minimize the chance that your messages are in that 20 percent. Every email that lands in spam is wasted money on your part, both for the email itself and any potential conversions it might have generated.

Fortunately, theres a lot you can do to keep your messages out of spam folders, and most of it is fairly straightforward. In the next section, well look at some of the most common reasons email goes to spam, and see how you can avoid them.

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Watch Your Sending Reputation

Online reputation and/or sending reputation certainly is the number one thing to focus on to avoid the spam folder. If your sending domain is known to have sent spam in the past, your chances of making it to the inbox will be fairly small. On the other hand, if you have used your domain to send quality emails for a long time, youre much more likely to have your emails delivered to your recipients inbox.

Each webmail will assign a reputation score to your domain and IP according to their own algorithms. They will monitor the behavior of your recipients when they receive an email from you, and they will use that data to score your future messages:

• If your emails generate negative metrics , then your score will be negatively impacted, and youll be more likely to see your emails landing in spam.
• If your emails generate positive metrics , then your score will be positively impacted, and youll be more likely to reach the inbox of your recipients.

Good to knowEven though we often talk about domain reputation and IP reputation, theyre not the only two things that carry a reputation with the webmail. Anything related to you as a sender can potentially carry a reputation and impact your inbox placement: URLs used in the content of your emails, HTML format of your emails, your contact list, etc. So changing your IP/domain will never help you get out of the spam box.

To Stop Email From Going To Your Outlookcom Deleted Items By Mistake

Messages in your Junk folder are automatically deleted between 10 and 30 days after they arrive.

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Your Email Frequency Is Off

Emailing too frequently? Recipients get tired and start ignoring your emails. They stop engaging with your communication, and because of that, ISPs such as Gmail or Outlook move your newsletters to the junk folder.

Sending one email every couple of months or so? People dont remember you and deliberately ignore your emails . Or they accidentally miss one or two and lose the chance of seeing your content for several months straight.

As you can see, neither of these options is good for your inbox placement rates or your return on investment.

The second ones problematic for yet another reason. If you have a big email list that you contact only every couple of months, ISPs might get alerted by the sudden email blasts. Such spikes in activity might cause temporary blocks, higher bounce rates, and more emails going to the junk folder.

As a general rule, you dont want to blast emails to your whole customer base and should opt for a more structured approach. But well get to that a bit later in this article.

Pro tip 1: Set the right email frequency by putting together your key email marketing metrics, like the total number of conversions, unsubscribe rates, and bounce rates). Once you decide on the right email schedule, make sure to communicate it to your audience, e.g., in your subscription form or the welcome email.

After youve managed to successfully engage your best recipients, you can start slowly including those who read your newsletters less eagerly.

So How Can You Tell If Your Emails Are Actually Being Delivered

You’re probably wondering now, are MY emails going to spam?

Unfortunately, knowing if your companies emails are going to spam is more complicated than looking at the delivery rate in your marketing automation platform. An email can be successfully delivered to spam.

Theres a big difference between the delivery rate report in most email marketing programs and email deliverability. The delivery rate essentially is the number of emails that made it to the digital post office. Ive seen many brands that have reported email delivery rates of 99%+ but still see their welcome emails to new subscribers going to spam.

So how can you tell if your domain reputation is causing emails to end up in spam?

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What Is The Can

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 spells out commercial email sending standards in the US.

Enforced by the Federal Trade Commission , the CAN-SPAM Act empowers email recipients to stop senders from emailing them.

Note that the CAN-SPAM Act applies to both bulk and individual email sent from any business.

Heres a rundown of the acts essential rules to help you send CAN-SPAM-compliant emails:

Next: Stop Spam From Your Contact Form

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Avoid Deny Lists And Monitor Your Reputation

Your email domain has an associated sending reputation, and if it begins to slip, you may find yourself on an email deny list. Even the most cautious and well-intentioned senders can end up on an email deny list occasionally. Reduce the risk of ending up on a deny list by implementing the following sending practices:

• Use confirmed opt-in or double opt-in to ensure engaged recipients.
• Implement a sunset policy to remove confirmed unengaged subscribers.
• Use real-time address validation to reduce the risk of false emails or typos ending up in your email list. Twilio SendGrids Email Validation API works in real time to support senders and detect errors in email addresses with machine learning.

Keeping watch over your delivery rates will notify you of any signals that you may be on a deny list.

Your Subject Line Or Email Body Uses Naughty Words

The second common reason we see emails being sent to the spam box instead of your subscribers inboxes is the use of naughty words in either the subject line or the body of the email.

Every email provider maintains a list of these no-no words that will automatically move emails to the spam box.

These include a wide variety of things, but some of the most common offenders include:

• Anything you write in all capital letters
• Nonstandard punctuation, like multiple exclamation points
• Anything related to making money online, such as easy cash
• The simple use of the word free or no-cost

It almost goes without saying that if youre in the e-commerce world some of these words or phrases may be more difficult to avoid, than if youre just a content-based website.

That being said, there are lots of clever ways of getting around using any of these words, so get creative.

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But Arent There Services Out There That Can Report On Inbox Placement

There are vendors that offer products that report on inbox placement. Most deliverability focused vendors will use one of two methods to provide their customers with reports based on inbox placement: panel data or seed lists.

Panel data uses a panel of recipients across the globe that agree to allow their inboxes to report on where mails are placed. Many of these recipients may use a free software that allows them greater control over their mailboxes in exchange for sharing their mail placement data. Seed lists are a list of curated email addresses across mailbox providers that are in use solely to report inbox placement back to the vendor offering the list. While both of these services can offer an email marketer some insight on how their messages are being placed, neither service is going to accurately reflect the inbox placement of the contacts within your recipient list. As the contacts within a panel or seed list arent a 1:1 match for the recipients in your list, the data these services provides cant accurately reflect the inbox placement for your database.

Your Emails Are Going To Spam Heres How To Stop It

You know youre legit, and we know youre legit. But your customers email service? They dont think youre it. To them, youve got spam written all over you. Youre going straight in that junk inbox.

Unfortunately, this is the reality for a lot of commercial emails, including ones that customers genuinely want to receive. Email marketers often have to jump through a lot of hoops to get their emails seen, and even the strongest campaigns can fall into a recipients spam folder. Email deliverability isnt an exact science, which can frustrate both email marketers and laymen alike.

Its a real shame for all the hard work youve put into crafting an email campaign to go to waste. Luckily, there are a few tried and tested techniques you can follow before you hit send that can help stop emails going to spam. Well get you out of that spam folder and back into the inbox in no time at all. Weve sourced some of the best tips for you and put them into a handy dmt guide to help you on your way to a junk-free future for your email marketing.

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