Why do some emails go into the spam folder?

It’s a big problem for marketers looking to communicate with their audience via email: how do we avoid emails going into the spam folder so they have a chance of being read?

Email service providers are constantly updating their spam filters in a bid to rid your inbox from unwanted emails. It’s great news for consumers, however these filters don’t always get it right and legitimate emails can get labelled as spam. This is bad news for marketers.

Well first let’s look at the main reasons why emails get labelled as junk and then we can look at how to improve the delivery rates of your emails.

Why emails get labelled as spam by email service providers

1. Spam trigger words?– certain words in the subject line of your email can give the spam filters reason to believe that your email deserves to be relegated to the spam folder. These words are extensive, but include “free”, “discount”, “Dear friend” and “this is not spam”! For a full list,?click here.
2. High image to text ratio?– overuse of images, or using one big image as your entire image could be harming your open rates.
3. Your IP is blacklisted?– this can happen if your IP has been used for spam emails in the past. It doesn’t necessarily have to be associated with you but could be another person on the same IP address. (Check out?who shares your IP?to see just how many websites are hosted on the same IP as yours).
4. EXCESSIVE CAPITALISATION OR PUNCTUATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?Because, well, it just looks spammy!
5. You’re sending an email to yourself?– if you’re testing an email before sending and send it to the email address the email will be coming from, it looks suspicious, so will likely end up in your junk folder.

Even if your email gets past the spam filter and into the inbox, there’s a real risk that your recipients will then delete the email or mark it as spam. This action will be noted and can affect the delivery of future emails from the same source, so it’s more bad news for marketers.

Why your recipients may mark your emails as spam

1. ‘From’ name is not familiar?– if you receive an email from an unknown company or person, you’re more likely to be suspicious about its contents and wonder where they got your email address from in the first place. If your recipients don’t recognise who your email is from, they may just mark it as spam.
2. Long time, no see?– similar to the above but can be when you start emailing a very old list. Perhaps you have customer data dating back several years and haven’t been in contact with them in that time. A sudden email out of the blue can cause an increase in emails being marked as spam.
3. Misleading subject lines?– ever opened an email to discover what they promised in the subject line wasn’t what they delivered in the email? It might seem like clever marketing to get your email opened, but you can end up annoying your audience and giving them a bad impression of your business.
4. Too frequent emails?– we’ve all signed up for email newsletters or given our email address when signing up for a webinar, course or free download, only to be bombarded with emails day after day. Whilst your audience may be opted in legitimately, they may view your incessant messages as spam and report them as such.

How to avoid your emails being marked as spam

1. Avoid using spam trigger words in your subject line (where possible – it’s easier said than done!).
2. Make sure your key messages are in text format rather than embedded in images.
3. Check your IP address?to make sure you’re not blacklisted.
4. Use capitalisation only where necessary and avoid excessive punctuation.
5. Ensure your 'From' name represents the same company or individual the recipients subscribed to.
6. If you haven’t emailed your database in a long time, firstly, check that your data is still GDPR compliant and you have a record of when and where your subscribers signed up. Then you may want to consider a re-introduction via email first before ploughing into any sales messages, just to give them a heads up!
7. Create enticing subject lines?that don’t mislead your recipients.
8. Go easy on the emails if you start seeing lots of new spam reports or unsubscribes – it could just be you’re emailing your audience too much.
9. Ask your recipients to add you to their safe senders list (or create a rule never to junk your emails).
10. When testing your emails, trying sending to a different email account like a generic Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo account rather than your business email.

Here’s a couple of tools you can use to scan your emails before you send them and alert you to any potential issues with deliverability such as IP blacklisting:

Litmus: paid for service (around $99/month for the basic package at time of writing)

ISnotSPAM: free service with less features

Found this useful? Share your thoughts below!