All marketers wonder why their emails ends up in the spam folder and want to know how to reduce it. In this article, we’ll cover the basics, such as checking your spam rate and how to send an email that won’t trigger spam filters.
You’ve probably come across the concept of an email spam rate. Email service providers (such as Google, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL, etc.) have their own algorithms and assign numerical equivalent scores to incoming messages. These mechanisms include criteria of content evaluation and technical parameters.
If you receive a low score, your message will end up in the spam folder. That’s why it’s so important to understand the principles behind how your email gets rated as spam.
How to Check the Spam Rate of Your Email?
For each email campaign to succeed, you need to check the spam rate in advance. We recommend using the GlockApps service to track your spam score and other deliverability metrics. The Inbox Insight tool provides you with a list of seed email addresses to which you should send your test email. Once complete, you can click the View Report button to evaluate the detailed results. Also, the GlockApps spam tester conducts an authentication check of your domain: DMARC monitoring, SPF, and DKIM records alignment.
The Inbox Insight tool gives you a clear vision of your deliverability metrics and offers valuable tips to improve your inbox performance, which is very important in the success of your entire strategy.
How Do Spam Filters Work?
You need to understand that the success of your email marketing campaign depends to a large extent on the technology of spam filters and their algorithms. Filters are designed not only to block messages but also to organize them.
Many email service providers and clients nowadays divide your messages into conveniently separate categories: primary, social, commercial, and others. They use a number of specific criteria to properly evaluate the incoming message and place it in the appropriate folder.
These filters work in the same way to assign a spam score to messages. And if the score passes a certain threshold, the email goes to the Inbox. Otherwise, you can search for it in the Spam folder.
A number of spam criteria change and adapt on a daily basis, meaning that there is no set rule in this technology. For example, Google launched an AI-powered spam filter in its latest update to help Gmail users prevent excessive spam emails from reaching their inboxes.
Also, did you know that recipients can create their own rules to sort outgoing and incoming messages? For example, they can set a rule to never receive messages sent by certain recipients, or messages with suspicious attachments or URLs, in their primary inbox.
Filtering practices are usually not a publicized topic for security reasons, but there are still some general ideas about what they like and don’t like.
How to Decrease the Email Spam Score?
When you work hard to plan your campaign and your emails don’t reach potential customers and partners, your motivation decreases for obvious reasons. But there is a way out!
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all or clear-cut checklist of what to do to get a good email spam rate. Instead, you have many unknowns competing for your recipient inbox. But according to the advice of specialists, you should pay attention to the following points:
1. Avoid spammy words and control image to text ratio in your content.
If you don’t want your email to trigger spam filters, make sure it doesn’t look like spam. Even though this strategy is considered not quite relevant today, don’t write lines like “Total sale”, “You are a winner!”, “0% loan”, and “Free money!”, don’t overuse the following vocabulary in your content, and then make sure you do not use excessive punctuation and capitalization.
Be extra careful that your email does not contain mostly images without text, you risk raising the spam rating, as if “hiding” spam content from filters. Therefore, keep a healthy balance of text and graphics in your messages.
2. Do not send suspicious links or attachments.
When writing emails, it’s important to keep a balance and not overwhelm recipients with too many links and attachments. Limit the number of hyperlinks to a minimum to save readability and focus.
When you add attachments, make sure they are relevant and necessary, avoiding overloading the email with unnecessary files. Avoid sending attachments as archives or files, instead, upload the content to a trusted website and then send a link to it in the email to avoid raising suspicion with spam filters.
Finally, refrain from using shortened URLs, as they can be suspicious and are often associated with spam.
3. Make a text version alongside the HTML.
Despite the benefits of HTML for marketers, you should note that structuring and coding HTML content can affect spam filtering algorithms. Always keep in mind that some email clients may not display HTML code properly. Include a plain text version to ensure that your email is accessible to as many recipients as possible.
Excessive or misleading use of formatting and broken tags can trigger filters. To check, use the new HTML checker feature in the Inbox Insight tool from GlockApps, which inspects the overall compatibility and consistency of your message across various available platforms and provides you with an indication of its overall performance with email clients.
4. Use DMARC, SPF, and DKIM authentication.
Authentication with DMARC marks you as a legitimate sender in the eyes of ISPs. Use it to verify that your messages really come from you, which is an effective way to increase trust in your message and reduce the spam placement rate.
DMARC means Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, and it is the highest level of email security after SPF and DKIM. Simply put, during email authentication, the mail server first verifies your SPF and DKIM authentication, and then DMARC performs the matching of these two protocols.
Based on the type of policy (none, quarantine, or reject), it makes a decision on what to do with each email: let it go to the inbox, quarantine it, or reject it completely.
With the GlockApps DMARC Analyzer, you can quickly check how your domain is secured with DMARC and SPF and collect DMARC reports, seeing the sending sources, email authentication results, and any failures.
5. Keep your Sender Reputation high.
Being blacklisted can negatively impact your reputation as a sender. When too many customers mark messages from your domain as spam, it hurts your reputation and leads to more emails ending up in the spam folder.
You can protect yourself from this by ensuring that the emails you send are valuable and relevant to recipients, not too frequent and that you provide recipients with an easy and open way to unsubscribe as required by law.
Regularly check reputable blacklist databases to make sure your domain is not on them. Additionally, services like GlockApps provide detailed information about your email sender’s reputation, providing tips to keep it positive.
Conclusion
To ensure that your emails don’t end up in the recipient’s spam folder, constantly work on improving your content, checking whether the information you send to your customers is relevant, valuable, and up-to-date.
Also, email marketers should not forget to run regular spam tests, which the reliable Inbox Insight tool from GlockApps will be happy to help you with. It’s important to check all your email strategy’s aspects to achieve your business goals.
FAQ
Why do my emails end up in the Spam folder?
Your emails can end up in the spam folder for a variety of reasons, such as using words that trigger spam filters, sending to an unverified contact list that contains inactive or outdated email addresses, or because you have a low sender reputation.
What are the factors that influence whether an email is marked as spam?
Several factors contribute to this, including the content of your emails, the methods and frequency you use to send them, and the engagement recipients have with your emails.
How can you improve your deliverability and reduce the likelihood of your emails ending up in spam?
To improve your deliverability, focus on sending relevant content, clean your email list, run regular deliverability tests with GlockApps, authenticate your domain, and follow email marketing best practices.
What practices should I follow to keep my email campaigns from getting into spam?
Avoid spammy content, personalize your emails, regularly monitor your email deliverability metrics, and take any necessary actions to improve them.
What are some proven strategies to prevent my emails from being marked as spam?
Use email authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, use trusted email service providers, regularly monitor sender reputation, and use spam checker Inbox Insight to assess the spam rate of your emails before sending them and stay aware of your performance.
