Preventing Marketing Emails from Going to Spam

If you send marketing emails to clients via campaigns or automated flows, your emails may go to your clients' spam folders instead of their inboxes. Emails can go to spam for several reasons, such as content quality or low engagement history.

This article covers why your marketing emails may be going to spam and how you can help prevent it.

Link copied

Spam filtering

Link copied

Email providers use advanced filters to assign a spam score to every inbound email. If an email's spam score is above a certain number, the email will go to spam instead of the inbox.

Several factors can increase an email's spam score, including:

• Poor sender reputation: Email providers consider your sender reputation poor based on your sending history. Factors such as bounce rates, spam rates, and engagement history affect your sender reputation.

• Missing authentication protocols: If you send your emails from your own domain, your domain lacks proper authentication protocols for validating your emails as legitimate, such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC).

• Low engagement history: Your emails have low recipient engagement rates, such as low open rates or click rates.

• High spam complaint rate: Your emails are frequently marked as spam by your recipients.

• Suspicious content formatting: Your emails have suspicious or low-quality content, such as misleading subject lines, excessive links or images, or overuse of promotional language.

• Inconsistent sending frequency: Your emails have an inconsistent sending pattern, such as sudden spikes in sending frequency.

Link copied

Preventing your emails from going to spam

Link copied

The following best practices can help prevent your marketing emails from going to spam:

• Obtain client consent: Make sure you get clear consent from clients before sending them marketing emails. Clients who have specifically opted in may be less likely to unsubscribe or report your emails as spam. High unsubscribe rates and spam complaint rates affect your sender reputation.

• Use high-quality content and formatting: Use relevant content in your emails and remove any excessive links, images, promotional language, or words in all caps that could cause your emails to look like spam. Make sure your subject lines are not misleading or excessively sales-oriented.

• Send to specific client groups only: Send your emails only to clients who you know will be interested instead of sending to your entire client list.

• Send at a consistent frequency: Send your emails at a consistent (but not constant) frequency to allow your sender reputation to naturally improve over time. If you haven't sent any marketing emails in the past, start with a low sending frequency and gradually increase it over time.

• Send from your own domain: Send your emails from your own domain so you have control over your sender reputation, and so clients can easily recognize your emails.

• Add authentication protocols to your domain: If you send your emails from your own domain, make sure you implement the proper authentication and security protocols for your domain, such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These protocols will help email providers know your emails are legitimate.

Link copied

Viewing performance for emails sent to Gmail accounts

Link copied

If you send your emails from your own domain, you may be able to use Google's Postmaster Tools to track performance for emails sent to Gmail accounts.

Postmaster Tools lets you track various insights, including:

• Compliance status

• Spam rate

• Domain reputation

• Delivery errors

• Authentication

Link copied

Resources

Link copied

To learn more about spam filtering for different email providers, the following resources are available:

• Google Email Sender Guidelines

• iCloud Mail Postmaster Information

• Outlook.com Postmaster

• Yahoo Sender Hub