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Why do my Emails go to Spam?
Your campaigns land in spam folders for several reasons, including the sending email address, subject line, or message content.
Spam Filters
Even genuine and honest campaigns can get caught in spam filters based on small issues you may not have thought, like your email sending name or email address, and information shared from other spam filters. We can’t tell you exactly if your campaign went to junk folders or not.
Managing Recipients
If a lot of your recipients click the Report Spam button in their email client (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo), those services can start to block your campaigns and deliver straight to the spam folder.
If a recipient tells you he or she clicked Report Spam by accident, many email services include a Not Spam option. Ask the recipient to find the email in the spam folder, and mark it as Not Spam or Not Junk. Buttons and labels will vary by inbox. This can help keep future messages out of other recipients’ spam folders, too.
High complaint rate
If too many people are flagging your mail as spam, ISPs will take action and will first start sending your mail to the Spam Folder, then they may start throttling your messages or even block them.
High Frequency
This is the number one reason subscribers either hit the Spam Button or Unsubscribe from an email stream. ISPs want to make sure that their users’ mailboxes don’t get crowded and in order to protect their users from email fatigue they can start junking the messages.
Inadequate content
It is well known that the ISPs are protecting their users with the help of spam filters. Using the wrong words in your content or even characters in your email can trigger the spam filters and therefore throw your email in the Spam Folder.
Engagement
Most of the major email providers, including Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail, and Gmail, use engagement-based filtering to help detect spam. This means that the more your recipients interact with your emails by opening, clicking, and reading, the more highly engaged your audience is, and the more likely you’ll end up in their inboxes. If a lot of users are marking a message as spam, it’s more likely to end up in other people’s spam folders. If you’ve moved emails out of the spam folder, that’s a positive indicator and can help ensure future emails that are similar are delivered to the inbox instead.
You’re Using Spam Trigger Words
Email spam filters still look at the content within your email to decide whether it goes into the spam folder of your customer’s inbox.
Spam trigger keywords like “FREE”, “Buy”, “Double your income”, “You’re a Winner! ” etc.If they notice questionable “trigger words,” it’s a red flag and you’re email is likely to be sent to spam even if you have the best of intentions.
Your Subject line Is Weak
An email’s subject line is everything.
Besides the name of the sender, it’s the only thing a recipient has to go on when deciding whether it’s legit or not and whether they should open it.
69 percent of email recipients mark the email as spam based solely on the subject line.
So you need to nail it.
Besides steering clear of trigger words, there are some other subject line best practices you’ll want to follow to keep your emails out of the spam abyss.
These include:
- Not using excessive capital letters, which indicates that you’re shouting at recipients
- Not going overboard with exclamation points
- Not making false promises
- Not sounding overly pushy or salesy
You’ve Included Attachments
Attachments should be avoided like the plague for two reasons.
First, they alert spam filters and reduce the chances of your email making it to the recipient’s inbox.
For all they know, an attachment could be carrying some hardcore virus that’s just waiting to overtake an unsuspecting victim’s device.
Second, they can slow down the load time of the email, especially if they’re big and bulky.
Generally speaking, there’s no need to send a commercial email with an attachment.
There’s a Large Image with Minimal Text
Incorporating visuals into marketing campaigns has never been more popular. You should be aware of your text to image ratio and strive for 60/40, meaning that your email should be roughly 60 percent text and 40 percent image.
You Have Incorrect Spelling and Grammar
Spelling and grammatical errors could land your email in the spam folder. So you need to be extra diligent about double and even triple-checking each email before sending it out.