Everything from maintaining an email list and creating the most attractive email newsletter with useful content will be a waste of time if your email lands in the Spam folder. It could be the most frustrating thing to ever happen. However, it is not irreversible. In this article, I am going to explain ways to prevent emails from landing in customer’s spam folder.

As a matter of fact, a study from Return Path reveals that spam filters are getting more rigorous than ever. It is conveniently alarming. However, this article will help you keep your emails out of the spam folder and will reach where they belong.

12 tips to prevent emails from landing in customer’s spam folder

Do you have your email newsletter and you tend to maintain it? Then here are some tips to prevent your emails from landing in your customer’s spam folder. Landing your emails in the spam folder can hurt your reputation and credibility. Therefore, it important to make sure you’re doing everything right and reaching where you’re supposed to.

Avoid purchasing subscribing list and build your own

It can be tempting to purchase a list of millions of subscribers. However, is this the way you want to do it? Purchased lists can affect your reputation and can jeopardize all your hard work. They are usually riddled with dead emails and spam traps. It’s just a matter of time that they will report you as a spammer. At best, your email will end up in their spam folder. At worst, you may labelled as a spammer. Therefore, if you are still tempted to purchase a subscriber list, stop now.

On the under hand, we suggest you build your own email subscriber list. As they say, there is no shortcut to success. Therefore, start building your email list from scratch. It is the only way to get quality subscribers who actually want to receive emails from you and show interest in your work.

Watch what you say and pay attention to your email content

Do you know there are filters that analyze the content of your emails and determine where your email belongs. Some of the elements they analyze are header, footer, URLs, HTML codes, attachments, text-to-image ratio, subject line, spam words, etc. Therefore, it is important to watch what you write in your emails. We are not saying that there are some sort of magic keywords to land directly in the inbox of your customers. However, you can limit the likelihood of your emails being delivered in the junk folder by limiting the risky words like- promo, buy now, special offers, etc.

Try to keep your mails as relevant and useful as possible. Also, steer clear of promoting stuff in your mails unnecessarily. Or at least try doing it subtly. Moreover, you can test your email for risky elements by using tools like Mail-Tester. It checks your email for broken links, formatting, analyzes your email server, etc.

Authenticate your emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

Mailbox providers established some standardized authentication processes in order to preserve their level of security. In case your email fails authentication, it will go directly in the spam folder. Therefore, you need to be aware of those processes and make your mail meet these standardized authentication to make the mailbox providers believe you deserve to be in the inbox. Read further for more information on SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

Keep a check on your sender reputation

Always try to keep your sending identity consistent and monitor your Sender reputation. Sender reputation is basically a number between 0 and 100 assigned by ISPs to sender. These numbers determine the degree of trustworthiness earned by a specific sender. There are various factors considered including number of spam complaints, bounces, unsubscribes, spam trap hits, etc. this score further affects the way mailbox providers determine the different folder your email deserves. You can use various tools to test your send reputation like Sender Score.

Get a reliable ESP

You email service provider (ESP) plays an important role when it comes to earning a reliable Sender Reputation. People often look for the cheapest available ESP and fail to analyze other factors. Teaming up with a careless ESP with low scores on the IP addresses will make you land in the spam folder of your users. Moreover, it can also get you blacklisted by the providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Therefore, always team up with a reliable ESP that sends only solicited emails and ban spammers from their platforms. Such ESPs tend to have a greater credibility and are trusted by mailbox providers. Get a reliable ESP for a relaxed and undisturbed inbox delivery.

Never use dirty tricks

There are some tricks used by marketers to pose as an urgent email. Such tricks can turn out effective for short-time. However, using these tricks can damage your reputation in irreversible ways. Some of the dirty tricks you need to steer clear of are-

  • Image texts: sending an email using an image to conceal the text from the crawlers or spam filters.
  • Deceptive Subject lines: Using deceptive subject lines starting with ‘Fwd’ or ‘Re:’ suggesting an ongoing communication with the sender.
  • Hashbusting: using deceptive characters in the subject lines or email content to fool the spam filters, for example “$pec!@l Di$coun+”
  • Fraud claims: sending subject lines that have misleading claims. For instance, sending an email with the subject line “You just won $1,00,000” while the email suggests a list of conditions that need to be met in order to claim the prize.

Such tricks may fool a machine/algorithm once or twice but nothing gets you an unsubscribe faster than these dirty tricks. Therefore, steer clear any dirty tricks that can cause your permanent damage.

Stay out of blacklist

Check your sending IP and domain against the blacklist. Whenever a user reports you as spam or unsubscribes to you, it is stored in the email blacklists maintained by mailbox providers. Once you are reported as spam, your IP or domain gets blacklisted and the future emails from that IP or domain will be delivered to the spam or other junk folders. You can avoid being blacklisted by teaming up with a reliable Email Marketing Service (EMS). They ask mailbox providers like Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail to whitelist your IP or domain name. Moreover, when confirming your new subscribers, ask them to add your ‘From’ (email address) to their address books. This is a foolproof way to deliver your email in the inbox of your users and dodge the spam filters.

Your email address matters

Using a consistent sending identity is more important than you realize. Your sending identity is not just your email address but also your sending IP address and a sending domain. It allows mailbox providers to pinpoint the source of an incoming email. Consistent sending identity builds trust and more likelihood of delivering email in the main inbox. Keep the following things in mind while creating your From field address-

Avoid risky words/content

As I mentioned before, using risky elements like ‘free’, ‘promo’, ‘special destined’, etc, will definitely make your email end up in the junk section. Therefore, go through this checklist before hitting send-

  • Avoid using shortened URLs. Mailbox providers are extra vigilant for such techniques and will quickly label you as spam.
  • Steer clear of the spam words like discount, free, prize, bonanza, sale, promo, etc in your email or subject line. It’s better to take a look at the list of spam triggers before crafting your email and subject line.
  • Avoid using complex codes like ActiveX, JavaScript, VBScript, Iframes, Java Applets, frames, etc uploaded from an external Meta refresh website or CSS.
  • Don’t overuse caps lock in your subject line. Going ALL CAPS in your subject line will trigger a spam filter. Even if you want to put emphasis, try bold or italics but never go overboard with ALL CAPS.

Ask for permission twice from your subscribers

One way to keep the quality email subscribers is by asking them twice. Never prefer quantity over quality because if you subscribers are not reading your emails you’re just wasting your time and resources. Therefore, it is better to have fewer subscribers but quality ones. Those who actually read your emails and take action. To get the quality subscribers, ask for permission twice. This way if they mistakenly opted for the first time they can cancel the second time. Whereas you will only get the subscribers that actually want to hear from you. It is so easy and common but practiced rarely.

Check and remove hard bounces from your email list

Keeping your email list clean is the best way to avoid spam traps. Avoid sending the mails to inactive or dead addresses. Bounce rates are one of the important factors when it comes to determining your Sender Reputation. Sending emails to inactive accounts can hurt your ‘open’ ratio or worse, you will be recorded as a spam trap by your ISP. Therefore, you need monitor the hard bounces and remove them from your email list, before they hurt your sender

Be consistent with your mail delivery

Avoid overdoing it, you don’t want to annoy your subscribers to a point that they unsubscribe to you. However, under-doing it is also harmful. Your subscriber can forget about you and when they finally receive from you, they may delete your message. Therefore, the best way to keep them is by maintaining a stable flow of communication. Try doing it every Tuesday and Thursday. Stop relying on infrequent, massive blasts.

Check out Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, Sendinblue vs Sendgrid, Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign, ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot, Sendinblue vs Mailchimp, and ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp

Prevent Emails from Landing in Customer’s Spam Folder : Conclusion

This article only explains the utmost factors and ways to ensure you prevent landing your emails in spam folder. You must have noticed that all of the mentioned tips are consistently long-term processes. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula to land in the main email folder of your customer. Only way is the right way to deal with deliverability issues. Just team up with a reliable EMS and keep your mails relevant and consistent. This should do the trick of keeping your out of the spam folder.

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