How to Avoid Email Going to Spam
Published: February 14, 2025
To prevent emails from going to your spam folder, use strategies that ensure your messages will reach your subscribers’ inboxes. For SaaS businesses, this is urgent, because email remains a primary channel for emphasizing engagement with users, onboarding new customers, and effectively communicating with all users. This guide explains the strategies to utilize spam filters, improve sender reputation, and advance the effectiveness of email campaigns.
Keep Your Email List Tidy
Think of your email list like a garden. For the good plants (engaged subscribers) to flourish, the bad ones (invalid email addresses) must be pulled out.
- Check for bad emails: locate and eliminate inactive email addresses. Maintaining a positive sender reputation is crucial since it can affect email deliverability and keep your emails from getting flagged as spam. A higher score increases the likelihood that an email will be delivered.
- Put your subscribers in groups, sort the people on your list into categories according on their interests or how they respond to your emails. Sending messages that are more in line with the unique tastes and experiences of your audience is the main goal of this strategy.
If lots of your emails are bouncing back, try using a double opt-in process. Requiring people to re-verify their email address ensures authenticity.
A well-known email marketing tool, Mailchimp, assists companies in segmenting their customers according to a number of factors, including demographics, engagement levels, and past purchases. This makes it easier to send segmentation-based emails, which may affect spam complaints and open rates.
Free Email Deliverability Checklist
Improve your sender reputation, avoid spam filters & reach the inbox.
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Authentication protocols
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Content best practices
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List management tips
-
and more!
Prove You're the Real Deal
Just like a website requires a security certificate, emails need to be authenticated. This confirms the legitimacy of your emails, so that email providers distinguish them from fraudulent messages. Consider the following:
- SPF: This is essentially approved senders for your domain. It informs email providers who can send emails on your behalf.
- DKIM: This will add a digital signature to your emails, a stamp of approval, if you will. It verifies that emails have not been modified.
- DMARC: This sets standards for how email providers should handle your emails. By using DMARC, you reduce the possibility of unapproved parties copying your trademark.
Ask your domain registrar or an IT specialist for assistance if you’re unsure how to set these up.
In 2019, LinkedIn’s email deliverability may have been influenced by the implementation of DMARC. By taking control of their email ecosystem, users could safeguard against phishing attacks that attempted to spoof LinkedIn’s domain.
Free Email Deliverability Checklist
Improve your sender reputation, avoid spam filters & reach the inbox.
-
Authentication protocols
-
Content best practices
-
List management tips
-
and more!
Create Emails People Want to Read
Shoot for a conversational tone in your emails, avoiding aggressive or unfriendly language. Be sure to include interactive pieces that allow users to participate and provide feedback.
- Friendly subject lines: Keep your subject lines short, clear, and interesting. To avoid triggering spam filters, do not use all caps or words like “free” or “urgent”.
- Tailor your content: Offer information that is directly related to your customers’ interests and specific needs, such as updates and special deals. Make sure your emails are professional and easy to read.
- Test your emails: Send different versions of your emails to see what works best. This can influence your open and click-through rates.
Consider testing email subject lines to increase open rates, as they play a role in email engagement.
Free Email Deliverability Checklist
Improve your sender reputation, avoid spam filters & reach the inbox.
-
Authentication protocols
-
Content best practices
-
List management tips
-
and more!
Respect Your Subscribers
It’s crucial to build and maintain positive relationships with your subscribers.
- Respect consent: Be sure they are aware of and have consented to receiving your emails before including them in your mailing list.
- Confirm their email. Use a double opt-in process to make sure they really wish to be on your list.
- Provide a simple and accessible process for people to opt out of receiving further communications, and ensure their removal from the list is prompt and efficient.
Emails from HubSpot, a marketing automation platform, provide easily recognizable methods for unsubscribing.Subscribers can also manage their email preferences, customizing the type and frequency of emails they receive.
Evaluate your email program to determine if adjustments to frequency or content could address subscriber concerns.
Free Email Deliverability Checklist
Improve your sender reputation, avoid spam filters & reach the inbox.
-
Authentication protocols
-
Content best practices
-
List management tips
-
and more!
Monitor Your Email Deliverability
Be sure to evaluate how well your emails are executing by making sure everything is running smoothly. Specifically, you should look for:
- Email deliverability: This reflects the percentage of emails that successfully reach the intended recipients’ inboxes.
- Open Rates: Provides the exact number of people opening the emails you have sent.
- Click-Through Rates: Measures how many people are clicking on links you have given in your emails.
- Track Spam Complaints: Monitors the emails that are reported as spam which identifies issues with your content or targeting.
Some helpful tools:
- Utilize email deliverability platforms to monitor your sender reputation and identify issues that may require attention.
- Email Service Providers (ESPs): Find an ESP that will help you manage your email deliverability.
When email deliverability issues arise, seeking assistance from your ESP or an email specialist may prove beneficial in identifying underlying causes.
Conclusion
Keeping your emails out of the spam folder involves a combination of good email practices. This includes maintaining a clean email list, authenticating your domain, crafting engaging content, respecting your subscribers’ wishes, and monitoring your email deliverability. Adherence to these steps has been shown to be associated with a higher likelihood of emails reaching their intended recipients, which could potentially influence the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns.
FAQ
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This refers to how many of your emails successfully reach your subscribers’ inboxes rather than being delivered to spam folders or blocked entirely. This can depend on factors such as your sender reputation, email content, and authentication protocols.
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Use email deliverability tools such as Sender Score, MailTester, or Google Postmaster Tools to evaluate your sender reputation. These will provide insights into your domain’s health, IP reputation, and other things that influence deliverability.
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Spam traps are email addresses used by internet service providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers to identify senders who engage in spamming practices. Spam traps are known to negatively affect sender reputation and cause deliverability problems if activated inadvertently; therefore, avoiding such triggers is essential.
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It’s recommended to clean your email list at least every quarter, removing invalid, inactive, or unengaged subscribers. List hygiene may have a slight negative impact on email volume but can contribute to a better sender reputation and potentially improve email deliverability.
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Well, hard bounce rates are email messages failing to reach their recipients due to invalid email addresses, which shows how important a clean and accurate email list is. Soft bounces are usually temporary and may be resolved on their own.Various factors can affect email deliverability, including a full mailbox, large email size, server or DNS issues, or spam or suspicious content flags.
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Though emojis add personality to your subject lines, we recommend using them minimally. Consider ensuring your emails function across diverse email clients, potentially reducing reliance on graphics to minimize triggering spam filters.
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You can achieve this by using subscribers’ names, personalizing your lists based on their interests, and customizing your content to the needs and preferences of various groups.
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It is a U.S. law that sets the standards for commercial email, which includes requirements for obtaining consent, offering clear opt-out options, and respecting unsubscribe requests.
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If you believe your emails are ending up in spam folders, or seeing low open rates, review your email practices and be sure your sender reputation is in good standing. You can also consult with an email deliverability expert to understand the root cause to then implement necessary adjustments.
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