The world of email deliverability can be a frustrating place–have you looked at your email stats lately and wondered why your emails are going to spam? There are actually many reasons that your emails could be landing in the spam folder. Chief among them are your email list health (how are you bringing subscribers onto your list?), your authentication status, the value you’re providing your recipients with your email content, and your diligence in checking your email metrics.
How to ensure your emails stay out of spam
That may seem like a lot, but we’re here to help you understand how to avoid the spam folder and know that you’re not alone! Even the most seasoned and rule-abiding email marketers will experience delivery issues and (accidentally) send spam emails.
In this post, we share some of our best advice to ensure that your emails avoid spam filters and get delivered to your recipients’ inboxes. We’ll cover the following tips:
- Build your own email list
- Provide a double opt-in
- Authenticate your email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
- Regularly clean up your email list
- Avoid blacklists and monitor your reputation
- Provide a preference center
- Monitor your email engagement metrics
- Send valuable content!
Build your OWN email list
What you say in your emails is incredibly important, but your content doesn’t mean anything if you’re saying it to the wrong or to an unengaged audience. Always avoid:
- Renting, purchasing, or co-registering an email from a third party
- Sharing or using a shared list with a partner
- Scraping emails—if you’re using a robot to collect emails, known as email harvesting, this practice puts you squarely into the spam camp. Don’t ever do it!
Organically building your email list is a long-term play that will benefit your email program. It won’t be the easiest or the fastest way to grow your list, but it will be the most effective.
Provide a double opt-in
When you’re building an email list of new subscribers, consider how you will verify that your recipients want to receive email from your brand. We recommend using a double-opt-in method that provides a subscriber with a welcome email that they must confirm (usually check a box that says they agree to emails) before they officially end up on your email list.
Having subscribers use double opt-in shows that they have a genuine interest in your emails (which will keep your engagement and deliverability rates high).
Authenticate your email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
Email authentication can be tricky, but it’s easiest to remember that authenticating your email verifies that you are who you say you are and that you’re sending legitimate email. Inbox providers, like Google and Yahoo, trust authenticated email more and are more likely to deliver mail from authenticated email into the inbox.
The following methods authenticate your email and prove to the inbox providers that your email is worthy of the inbox and not the spam folder:
- Sender Policy Framework (SPF) – ensures you are who you say you are by comparing the sender’s IP (found in the domain’s DNS record) with a list of IPs authorized to send from that domain.
- Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) – meeting this standard ensures that the email was not tampered with during transmission.
- Domain-Based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) – leveraging the power of both SPF and DKIM, DMARC requires both to pass in order to send and deliver email.
The methods above are the responsibility of the sender, but buzinessware can help you with each.
Regularly clean up your email list
Some of your recipients will naturally unsubscribe from your email list, but keep in mind that many who no longer want to receive your email will simply ignore your emails instead of unsubscribing. This is actually harmful because the lower your email engagement rate, the less favorably you will be viewed by the ISPs. This means that Combat low engagement by regularly removing unengaged users, bounced emails, and role email addresses. Your email list is going to experience some amount of churn. Don’t take it personally! Be proactive, clean up your list, and you’ll start experiencing improved email deliverability rates.
Avoid blacklists and monitor your reputation
Your email domain has a reputation associated with it and if it slips or you send an email to a spam trap email, you may find yourself on an email blacklist. Unfortunately, even cautious and well-intentioned senders may find themselves on a blacklist.
Reduce the risk of ending up on a blacklist by considering some of the following practices:
- Using confirmed opt-in or double opt-in
- Implementing a sunset policy to remove unengaged subscribers
- Using real-time address validation—if somebody enters in a false email (or even a typo) and you send email to that invalid email address, your sender score suffers.
Keeping an eye on your delivery rates will notify you of any signals that you may be on a blacklist. For more information on blacklists, read Avoiding Blacklists: Best Practices For Reducing Your Risk of IP and Domain Blacklisting.
Provide a preference center
A preference center allows new subscribers and existing subscribers to choose how frequently they receive your emails. They also reduce the risk of your subscribers marking your emails as spam by putting them in control over the type of content they receive from you and when.
Provide a simple and prominent preference center to reduce friction and the risk of irritating your recipients. As a result, you’ll see higher engagement rates…which helps keep your emails from going to spam!
Monitor your email engagement metrics
Tracking your email performance and engagement metrics is the only true way to know if your email program is improving or if some changes are needed. But, before you measure, it’s important to develop some baseline metrics so you have a consistent picture of your email performance.
The following metrics are a good place to start:
- Spam complaints
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
Don’t panic if you start to notice negative trends, just be to sure to act quickly once you do. For example, if your open rates are starting to dip, review your subject lines and email frequency as those two variables are likely affecting this metric.
Send valuable content
At the core of any successful email program is a commitment to sending valuable, interesting content to your recipients. Don’t send email just to send email or to hit a quota! When you do, your engagement suffers. Every time you send an email and it doesn’t resonate, it decreases the likelihood that your recipient will open or click your next email. And that all means a higher likelihood of landing in spam.
So the next time you start drafting your next email, ask yourself these questions:
- Am I sharing new or urgent information with my recipients?
- When was the last time I sent an email about this topic? Is it too soon to send another update?
- Do all of my subscribers need to know this information or does only a segment of my list need to be updated?
- If I received this email would I find it valuable?
Takeaways
Email marketing is far from simple and no matter how hard you try, finding perfection is a fleeting goal. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get close! Following the tips above position your email program to perform its best. Always keep in mind that the higher your email engagement, the more likely your email will end up where it is intended and not get caught in spam filters.
Email is constantly changing and so are best practices, so the best thing you can do is make sure you’re up to date on those best practices