Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience and drive conversions. But if your emails end up in spam folders, you're wasting your time and money. How can you avoid this fate and ensure your emails reach the inbox of your subscribers? Here are some tips to help you keep your emails out of spam folders and increase your open rates.
Spam filters are the software that scan your emails and decide whether they are legitimate or not. They use various criteria, such as sender reputation, subject line, content, formatting, and links to evaluate the emails. Common triggers that can flag your emails as spam include using all caps or excessive punctuation in the subject line, sending emails from a free or generic domain, including too many images or HTML code in the content, having attachments or spammy links, and sending emails to inactive or invalid addresses. To avoid these triggers, you should follow email marketing best practices such as personalizing your subject line, using a professional and verified domain, creating clear and relevant content, optimizing images and links, and maintaining a clean and engaged email list.
2 ways to stay out of spam (without spending a fortune to get out of it!) 1. Solid domain reputation 2. Strong IP reputation
Gaining permission and consent from your recipients is a crucial factor for successful email deliverability. Without permission and consent, you are not only breaking the law and losing the trust of your audience, but you are also putting yourself at risk of being marked as spam or reported as abuse. To acquire permission and consent, you should employ a double opt-in method which requires your subscribers to confirm their subscription via email. It is important to explain what kind of emails you will be sending, how often, and what value they will provide. Additionally, it should be easy for subscribers to opt out or change their preferences at any time, while respecting their privacy and data protection rights in accordance with regulations such as GDPR or CAN-SPAM. This way, you are not only creating a positive relationship with your subscribers, but also demonstrating to spam filters that you are a trustworthy sender.
Monitoring your metrics and feedback regularly is a great way to keep your emails out of spam folders. You should track the delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, spam complaints, and feedback loops. The delivery rate measures the percentage of emails successfully delivered to subscribers' inboxes. The open rate measures the percentage of emails opened by subscribers. The click-through rate measures the percentage of emails that generate clicks on your links. The bounce rate measures the percentage of emails rejected by recipients' servers. The spam complaints measure the number of times subscribers mark your emails as spam or report them as abuse. Feedback loops are reports sent by email providers when subscribers mark your emails as spam. By monitoring these metrics and feedback, you can identify and fix any issues that may affect email deliverability, such as low engagement or high spam complaints. This data can also be used to optimize your email strategy, such as segmenting your list or testing subject lines.
1. Keep your open rate above 15% to be safe. 2. Make sure you’re not on Spam blacklists. Mxtoolbox.com has a free tool to check. Unfortunately, getting out of the spam folder is much tougher than staying out, and less costly too. 3. Keep a clean list
Do not hide your unsubscribe button. Make it clear and easy to find. When recipients can not easily find your unsubscribe button it is easier to just hit "mark as spam" then continue searching. In addition to your unsubscribe button you should also have a feedback button. "Getting emails from us to often, have a suggestion for better content, just click here and tell us about it. We appreciate your input to help us improve our content and emails we send you."
To keep your emails out of spam folders, it's important to test them before sending. This can help you catch any errors, glitches, or spam triggers that may prevent your emails from reaching the inbox. You can do this by sending them to yourself or a colleague and checking how they look and function on different devices, browsers, and email clients. Additionally, you can use a spam checker tool, such as Mail Tester or GlockApps, which can score your emails and provide suggestions on how to improve them. Finally, you can send the emails to a small sample of your subscribers and measure their response and feedback. Testing your emails before sending them ensures that they are optimized for your audience and the spam filters.
If you are sending an HTML message only and find during testing that your messages are often getting pushed to spam folders, try adding a text only copy to the HTML version so the spam checker can make a more accurate determination of your content.
Before sending to your entire audience list, make sure your email domain has warmed up! After that, you still try to achieve a high engagement, which will benefit your delivery rate!
3 Ways To Help Stay Out Of Spam 1. Content is key 2. Setup SPF and DKIM. DMARC can’t hurt either. 3. Use Google Postmaster *don’t skip the other tips listed above
As always, the best way to stay out of spam folders is to have relevant content that your email list is interested in and wants to receive. This will reduce the number of recipients that mark your content as spam as well as increase the overall number of recipients opening and interacting with your content. All of which will improves your email profile and reduce the likelihood of getting blacklisted and sent to spam folders.