How to Avoid Your Emails Being Caught up as SPAM

Every email marketer makes it their priority to get their mail into the inbox (or, at least, the Promotions folder in Gmail). Recently, we did some research into just how much SPAM we actually receive and the results are pretty staggering! Here are some useful techniques on how to avoid your emails being caught up as SPAM.

Do the basics right (Don’t pretend you are someone else, use authentication)

There are simple things you should always be doing – be honest about who you are and don’t pretend to be someone else, make sure your ESP helps you with authenticating your emails (expect to hear terms like DKIM, SPF and more) and generally be a good sender.

Look at your opt-in’s

The source of most deliverability issues is usually traced back to the origins of data collection. You only want customers on your email list that aren’t going to be problematic. Therefore, always make sure you provide a means of opting out and be wary of using 3rd party sources or competitions to acquire email addresses as they tend to only attract the likes of competition addicts, not those likely to shop with you.

Remove bad addresses

If an email address no longer exists then stop sending straight away. If you move ESP it’s essential to take these with you to ensure you suppress them. Looking at the percentage of invalid addresses you send to is an indicator by the likes of Hotmail for whether you are a legitimate sender that should be allowed to reach the inbox.

Beware of old data

If you find a pot of email addresses on your system but you can’t remember why they can’t be sent to, don’t add them in. Old email addresses are likely to be a source of spam traps, increase your bounce rate and generate complaints from people who have forgotten who you are.

Segment by engagement

The customers most likely to report your email as spam are those that never open your emails. You can avoid this, and save yourself transmission rates, by segmenting these out. In Maxemail, we update fields for things like last open, last click, first and last sent so you can easily create rules to add to your emails.

Remove spam complaints

If you use a reputable ESP this should happen without you realising. Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail all provide ‘feedback loops’ that essentially tell the ESP who has reported your email as spam and they will unsubscribe them for you straight away.

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