How to Prevent Emails Going to Spam and Improve Deliverability
June 12, 2024. Written by Keli Dantin.
Receiving zero replies to your sales outreach emails would typically imply that your pitch isn’t working. But in 2024, with nearly 89% of marketers reporting an increase in their email marketing budgets, it may just mean that your emails are getting caught by more sophisticated spam filters. Unless your email marketing strategy really is bad, then that’s another topic you may want to check out.
The growing volume of sales-related emails is a key factor driving the need for more effective spam filtering. The importance of learning how to prevent emails from going to spam cannot be overstated as it will continue to impact our ability to communicate and maintain engagement with our audience. In today’s digital world, having the know-how to stop email going to spam is not just a technical skill but a necessity.
In this article, we'll delve into understanding spam filters and why emails wind up there to begin with. I’ll share some best practices, based on my own expert experiences, of what you can do to prevent emails going to spam. And I’ll share some tips on how to recover from the spam folder, should your emails find their way there.
Why Emails Go to Spam: Understanding Spam Filters
What are Spam Filters?
Spam filters are sophisticated systems used by Internet Service Providers (like Gmail or Outlook) and email services to prevent unwanted and harmful emails from reaching users' inboxes. These filters act as protective barriers, screening incoming messages for signs of spam or malicious content. Essentially, they are automated gatekeepers that use a variety of criteria to determine whether an email is legitimate or not.
While spam filters protect users from malicious emails, they can also be the reason your safe emails get flagged as spam. For sales and marketing professionals, they can make it really, really difficult for us to reach a new lead via email.
How Spam Filters Work
When emails go to spam, it’s the result of a multi-layered security approach, where each layer scrutinizes different aspects of incoming emails.
Initially, content filters analyze the text within the email, looking for known spammy words or phrases.
Following this, header filters assess the email's metadata to check for suspicious attributes.
Blacklist filters play a crucial role by checking if the sender's IP address is listed on any known spam blacklists, effectively blocking emails from known spammers.
Additionally, rule-based filters apply specific user-defined rules to further filter messages.
The final layer might involve challenge-response filters, which require verification from the sender to pass the filter.
Modern spam filters also incorporate machine learning algorithms, which learn from past data to improve their filtering accuracy. These algorithms analyze patterns in both 'ham' (non-spam emails) and spam messages to enhance their predictive capabilities.
Common Criteria for Spam Filters
Spam filters use a set of common criteria to identify potential spam. Frequent triggers include the use of spammy words like "free,” “winner,” or sexually suggestive content. Phrases promising quick riches or unbelievable deals are also red flags.
The structure of the email also matters; excessive use of images, flashy HTML elements, or improper formatting (like all caps or too much-bolded font) can trigger spam filters. Similarly, emails with a high number of links or those that use deceptive URL text can be flagged as spam. An example of deceptive URL text: click here for my website, except the hyperlink would bring the user to another website than lavishmarketing.net.
Other criteria include the sender's reputation, which can be affected by previous spam reports, and the level of engagement previous emails have received. Email engagement is a measure of how your recipients are interacting with your emails – the number of opens, replies, link clicks, etc. And yes, low engagement rates can absolutely lead to future emails being sent to spam folders more frequently.
By understanding these filters and criteria, we can tailor our email practices to ensure better deliverability and avoid the spam folder. This insight not only helps in crafting compliant emails but also in fostering better engagement with recipients, ensuring that our messages are both seen and valued.
Reasons Why Emails Go to Spam
Email Authentication Issues
One of the primary reasons senders may find their emails going to spam is due to missing or improperly set up email authentication. Various email authentication standards, such as DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, are crucial for verifying that emails genuinely come from the stated domain and not from a malicious impersonator. When these authentication measures are not correctly implemented, inbox providers' spam filters are likely to flag these emails as potential spam.
You can learn more about email authentication standards for Gmail in this blog article.
Bad IP or Domain Reputation
The reputation of the IP address and domain from which emails are sent significantly affects email deliverability. Yes, you read that correctly - your device and your email address.
An IP address is a unique string of characters that identifies a device using the Internet Protocol. Your desktop or your cell phone. The domain is the address used to access a website, like lavishmarketing.net. For email, this would be the portion of your email address following the @ sign.
A history of low spam complaints and bounce rates contributes to a trustworthy IP reputation. Conversely, a high number of complaints can severely damage credibility and lead to emails going to spam instead of inboxes.
Domain reputation is increasingly becoming a critical factor for preventing emails going to spam. A consistent domain across various email service providers helps maintain a stable reputation, which is essential for ensuring emails reach their intended inboxes.
Suspicious Content and Attachments
Content can also attribute to emails going to spam. Such as, messages that use spammy keywords, excessive links, or the inclusion of too many images. Moreover, emails that lack a plain-text version of their HTML content may also be flagged. The use of URL shorteners and attachments, particularly those commonly associated with malware (such as ZIP files or executable files), can raise suspicions. Spam filters are particularly vigilant about emails with attachments, as these can often carry malicious content.
Improper List Management
The quality of your data plays a crucial role in email deliverability. Email lists that contain outdated or invalid email addresses, or those acquired through dubious means, are likely to result in high bounce rates and spam complaints.
Maintaining a clean, engaged, and regularly updated email list is foundational to avoiding emails going to spam. This involves removing bounced and invalid email addresses, as well as unresponsive or inactive leads.
In summary, to improve email deliverability and prevent emails going to spam, it is essential to focus on robust email authentication practices, maintain a good IP and domain reputation, manage email content and attachments carefully, and uphold rigorous list management standards. By addressing these areas, we can significantly enhance the chances of our emails reaching the intended recipients.
Prevent Emails Going to Spam: Actionable Strategies for Inbox Deliverability
Authenticate Your Emails
Proper email authentication helps email providers recognize your emails as legitimate, preventing them from going to spam. Setting up SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) are foundational steps in this process. To do so, you’ll need access to your domain and email account login credentials.
I wrote a separate blog article that shares instructions and tutorials on how to configure these email authentications in Gmail. And here is a link for Microsoft Outlook users. If you need to create a valid DMARC record, Warmup Inbox offers a free tool to help you do so.
Regularly Clean Your Email List
Maintaining a clean email list is crucial to prevent emails going to spam. This involves removing inactive or invalid email addresses, which improves deliverability and protects sender reputation.
The easiest way to clean up an email list is with an email verification tool, like Zero Bounce. There is a free plan that will allow you to check 100 emails per month to determine if any are invalid. Their paid plans begin at $18 per month and will allow you to upload a list of 2,000 email addresses at one time.
You can also use Apollo to valid email addresses. If you aren’t familiar with Apollo, you are missing out! Check out this article to learn about how I use Apollo for lead gen and email marketing.
Monitor Sending Practices
Monitoring how you send emails can also influence whether your emails end up in the spam folder. If you're sending too many emails too quickly, it might trigger your emails to go to spam instead. Start small and gradually increase the amount of emails you send per day a little at a time. With email marketing, it’s advisable to maintain a natural pace of emailing that matches human behavior to avoid spam filters.
With email automation software, like my favorite Apollo, you can configure your account to track all of these safe sending guidelines automatically. Apollo allows you to set a maximum daily send rate as well as a maximum hourly send rate. This way, if your daily send rate is 50, you aren’t sending all 50 emails in the first minute of the day. Since it isn’t humanly possible to send 50 separate emails in 1 minute, it would be clear to email service providers that a machine is actually sending those emails.
Consistently monitoring your email deliverability and making adjustments based on the feedback can significantly improve how your emails are received. For example, when I discovered that the above-mentioned email marketing campaign’s deliverability score had dropped to an 84, I immediately decreased the daily send limit to 10. I allowed my warm up tool to do its thing until the deliverability score improved, then I began to gradually increase my send limits again.
This is why following all of the best practices shared in the above section is so vital. Also, working with an experienced email marketing agency (cough, cough like Lavish Sales & Marketing) will give you expert guidance on what works and what doesn’t.
Monitor Engagement Metrics
Monitoring how recipients interact with our emails gives us valuable insights into what content resonates with them. High engagement rates are a positive signal to email providers and help in maintaining a good sender reputation.
Engagement metrics are calculated automatically by most email marketing software providers. These include open rates, click-through rates, and the time recipients spend on our emails. This data allows us to continuously refine our email content to ensure it remains relevant and engaging.
Use Spam Checkers
Spam checkers play a critical role by previewing how email filters will treat our emails before they are sent. These tools analyze our emails for elements that might be considered spammy, such as certain phrases or excessive links, and provide a spam score. Warmup Inbox offers a free email spam words checker on their website, located under “free tools” on the main navigation.
By adjusting your emails based on the feedback from these spam checkers, you can greatly enhance the chances of your recipient actually seeing your message vs emails going to spam. For example, after running your emails through a spam checker, you might learn that your design has some elements that typically trigger spam filters. You might instead consider sending your message as a regular, non-graphic text. Or you might need to edit your content to eliminate phrases that commonly flag emails going to spam.
Personalize and Segment Emails
Personalization and segmentation are effective strategies to ensure your emails are relevant to each recipient, which can significantly decrease the likelihood of being marked as spam. List segmentation ideas include location, job title, industry, past behavior, or engagement level. Segmenting your leads will allow you to tailor the content of your emails to meet the specific interests of different groups.
A common B2C segmentation strategy is sending targeted offers based on past purchases. For example, purchasing a pair of jeans from Old Navy then receiving an email a month later about their upcoming denim sale.
One of the most common ways to segment your B2B targets is by job title. For example, your pitch to CFOs would likely focus more on the ROI your product or service delivers. Whereas, when emailing the actual user, you’re likely to focus your email content on the features of your product or service, and how you solve their pain points.
If you’d like help with designing a compelling segmentation strategy for your business, send us a message. Email marketing is one of our specialities and we have many years of experience to know what works and what doesn’t.
How to Recover from the Spam Folder
Identify the Issue
To secure inbox placement for your future emails, a great starting point would be to identify why your emails are going to spam in the first place. Sounds straightforward right? Well, it’s not. That’s because email service providers don’t tell us their exact formula for what constitutes spam. Otherwise, scammers would just develop a new workaround.
Most email marketing software solutions, like Apollo, will calculate a deliverability score to give you some guidance on where your emails might be landing. If you aren’t using email marketing software, you can also monitor the health of your email with Warmup Inbox. They also offer a free email spam checker to automatically test your emails across leading email providers.
Make Necessary Changes
The real benefit of an email warmup tool like Warmup Inbox is to help you reverse the effects of a poor deliverability score. In other words, to deliver your email right into your recipient’s inbox instead of your emails going to spam.
When you send an email, the recipient's email service provider will check your IP and domain history to determine the engagement of users who received your emails before. And as I stated in a previous section, more engagement from your IP and your domain means a higher domain and IP reputation. An email warmup tool can help create positive engagement with your email address.
Email warmup technology automatically sends, opens, replies, clicks, marks as safe, etc. emails between their clients. Thus, my inbox will deliver my “real” emails that I’m actually sending throughout the day as well as a predetermined amount of auto-generated emails from my warm up tool. 100% of the warm up tool’s sent emails will be engaged with, thus making it appear to email service providers that the emails I send are relevant to my audience.
My most recent success with Warmup Inbox improved my email deliverability score from 84 to 96 in less than two weeks.
Conclusion
Achieving stellar email deliverability and engagement isn't a one-time fix, but rather a continuous process of learning and adaptation. By prioritizing authentication methods like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, you’ll establish trust with email providers. Meticulous list management ensures a clean list of engaged contacts. Utilizing a warmup tool will help to build a strong sender reputation faster. And monitoring engagement metrics will help you to understand what resonates with your audience, just like website analytics.
The magic truly happens though when you personalize content for specific audiences, going beyond generic AI generated sales emails. Through these combined efforts, your emails will not only land safely in inboxes, but also spark genuine interest and encourage interaction.
Need More Help?
Lavish is a premier sales and marketing agency, with top of the funnel sales being our specialty. Email marketing is the most efficient strategy a business can incorporate to ensure their top of the funnel is healthy. Coupled with an effective lead gen strategy and automation tools like Apollo.io, Warmup Inbox, and Zero Bounce, we’ve helped many clients achieve a consistent stream of new leads. Contact us today to discuss how we can help your business achieve top of the funnel success with email marketing. Lavish is owned and operated by Keli Dantin.
