Consider how much time and effort you put into drafting emails, only for them to end up trapped in your recipients’ spam folder. That’s a frustrating experience, but the worse part is your recipients might never know that you sent an email because, let’s face it, who checks their spam?
Keep reading to learn some practical strategies to ensure that your emails don’t end up in the spam folder.
Why Your Emails End Up in the Spam Folder
A large proportion of emails sent every day are scams designed to steal money or information from victims. Considering how challenging it would be for email users to manually organize and filter through these emails, email services have adopted robust solutions to combat these.
A spam folder is a holding place for emails suspected of being deceptive or unsolicited. Email services use filters to determine which emails are likely to be spam, and these messages are sent to the spam folder.
Spam filters work by using various methods to identify potential spam content in an email, including checking the sender’s IP address against a blacklist of known spammers, deceptive subject line, and email content, just to name a few.
The problem is, legitimate emails can sometimes get trapped in the spam folder when they contain spam triggers.
6 Effective Tips to Help Keep Your Emails Out of the Spam Folder
1. Avoid Spam Triggers
Spam filters scan your content, looking for specific triggers to determine whether your email is likely spam. Here are some spam triggers to avoid:
- No unsubscribe links in emails: Most people have experienced receiving a seemingly legitimate email from a brand they frequently buy from, only to find that there’s no unsubscribe link at the bottom of it. Some brands will add their contact information while excluding a way for recipients to easily opt-out of future communications. If you omit an easy-to-find unsubscribe link, your messages might end up going straight into the spam folder.
- Subject lines with all caps or excessive exclamation points: Subject line content can also trigger anti-spam measures because words like “free” or “sale” are commonly used in scam emails. Using all caps in your subject line is a dead giveaway that your email might be spammy, as is using too many exclamation points. Some of the most common spammy words/phrases include 100% free, deal of a lifetime, FLA$H SALE NOW ON!!!, 100% satisfied, F.ree. p.r!z.e, free gift, and more.
- Phishing attempts: Phishing scams are designed to trick people into revealing sensitive information like passwords or credit card numbers by pretending to be from a legitimate company. Emails containing phishing links are often caught by spam filters and sent directly to the spam folder.
- Unnecessary attachments: If your email contains an attachment, be sure it’s something the recipient wants or needs. Emails with excessive attachments typically get sent to the spam folder because they can contain viruses and spyware, posing a security risk for recipients.
- Too many images: Many legitimate marketing campaigns use multiple images as part of their strategy, but too many may trigger anti-spam measures. You should also avoid replacing your text with images. This is because it has become common practice for spammers to include spammy words in images in a desperate attempt to trick spam filters.
2. Proofread Your Emails
It’s always a good idea to proofread your emails before sending them, but this is especially important if you want to avoid the spam folder. Typos and errors can easily trigger spam filters.
That’s because phishing email scams are typically filled with mistakes. Spammers do this intentionally to receive responses only from their most gullible recipients to avoid wasting time going back and forth with too many people, as they generally send emails in the thousands.
That said, the more you make typos while writing emails, the higher your chances of ending up in the junk folder. You can also leverage editing tools like Grammarly to assist you with this task.
3. Get Permission to Send Emails
One of the best ways to make sure your emails don’t end up in the spam folder is to get permission from subscribers to send them marketing messages. This means obtaining an explicit opt-in from each contact, rather than using a purchased email list or harvesting email addresses from the web.
Obtaining consent from recipients is especially important when following the regulations governing email marketing, like Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), which requires that you have express consent before sending any commercial electronic messages.
There are many ways to get explicit consent, such as having a checkbox on your signup form or including a statement like “I would like to receive updates from [brand]” in your subscription confirmation message.
Getting permission from subscribers is not only an effective way to avoid the spam folder, but it is also an ethical and legal requirement.
4. Ask Recipients to Whitelist Your Emails
Another way to ensure your emails don’t end up in the spam folder is to ask recipients to whitelist your email address. This simply means adding your email address to their contact list or safe sender’s list, which will tell their email client not to automatically send your messages to the spam folder.
When asking recipients to whitelist your emails, always provide clear instructions on how they can do this.
5. Improve Your Reputation Through Authentication
Authentication is a process that verifies you as the owner of a domain name (like “brand name”) or IP address. This is especially useful for people using custom email addresses.
Authentication involves sending encrypted messages from your server to recipients’ servers for validation purposes. Without proper authentication in place, some ISPs block incoming mail completely, which means they may not receive any legitimate marketing email campaigns at all.
The best way to avoid this issue is by using both Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). The reason why these authentication methods are recommended is that they help prevent spoofing by providing email validation.
This prevents your emails from being flagged as spam or going to a junk folder.
6. Leverage Spam Checkers
Using spam checkers is an effective way to improve the delivery and open rates of your emails. You can use an online solution like GlockApps to help you identify any potential issues with your email content that could trigger spam filters.
This tool helps to assess your email deliverability. It also provides you with insights and recommendations to help you overcome any delivery-related problems.
Improve Your Email Productivity With These Tips
Making sure your emails don’t end up in the spam folder is one of the best ways to reach your target audience and get the results you need.
With this in mind, you can leverage these tips to ensure that your emails make it to recipients’ inboxes.