3 Common Reasons Your Emails Land in the Spam Folder

Hannah Baker needed 13 reasons why to commit suicide but your mails only need three.

The email has the highest ROI (return on investment). The use of email is the foundation of digital marketing. Emails have a direct engagement with the clients. Emails are the first check of the day for 58 per cent of people. Emails can work wonders for your lead generation and lead nurturing. Emails are inexpensive. Emails can be used for a variety of purposes like a discount announcement, surveys, product feedback, cart abandonment feedback etc.

Emails can be a powerful tool but there is no point of this power if misfires in a spam folder. When your email consistently moved to spam folder then the email service provider can blacklist you thus barring from any future email marketing.

Every email server maintains a sender score for every email sender. The sender score is the numerical representation of your sending reputation. Many key metrics determine your sender score such as sending volume, sender rejected rate, spam trap hits, unknown user rate etc. The scores range from 0 to 100. If key parameters area affected by your email sending lists then your sender score fluctuate. Lower sender score will get your mails to land in a spam folder. The sender score is email sending standard that every sender should be aware of and should maintain a high sender score if he wants to stay in email marketing for the long run.

What Is Spam?

Spam is an unsolicited message sent to the user over the Internet for purpose of advertising, phishing, spreading malware etc. Spamming has no operating cost. The cost is borne by the public and internet service providers. Spam gets a very bad reputation because hacker uses email for sending viruses and malware to your computer system.

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them.

Why spamming is bad for your business?

Image source – https://www.propellercrm.com

Spamming gives a bad reputation to your business and makes you look desperate. Spamming annoys people to no end. Spamming can make email server to blacklist you. Internet servers can penalize you also. The monetary penalty can also be imposed. Nobody will buy anything from you if you annoy people with spam.

Reasons why email land in the spam folder?

1. Your email lists are not organic – There is a clamour to stop GMO, your email lists need to be organic too. If email appending services and skip tracing services are used by your business for creating a mailing list by email address search and address search then your emails are likely to land in the spam folder. The mail list created by email appending services collected email addresses through data scraping websites or use third-party database. The user of the email address collected thorough have not consented to receive your promotional content. These email addresses although verified by email verification and email address validation can turn out to be obsolete.

List created by this may provide your will with a large customer base to work with but these lists are laden with inactive users, spam email address and already blacklisted email address. Emailing to these can surely give you the satisfaction of having a large database but in long term will be a blunder for your mailing campaign.

The invalid and inactive email address can trigger a spam filter and you are constantly sending to those addresses can make you a detected by spam radar.

When you organically make people subscribe to your content then too you have to use email data validation and email verification as people sometimes, intentionally or unintentionally, can give your wrong addresses. In case of email appended list verification is the necessary step to be followed.

The list can also contain spam traps. Spam traps are the honey pots created by internet service providers to identify and monitor spam email. These lure spammers. You should remove spam traps from your email lists or you will end up getting blacklisted.

The invalid address can increase your emails bounce rate which can lower your sender score.

2. You don’t get technicalities right – According to Murphy’s Law, "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong" in case of email spamming, whatever encompasses many things.

The spam filter is a program that used to detect the unsolicited and unwanted email and stop them to get in the user mailbox. To get past this Gandalf you need a trespassing strategy. The spam filter is often triggered by certain word in subject or body of the email. These words are mostly used to draw attention by a spammer. Some examples are congratulation, order now, winner, this is not spam, guarantee etc. Avoid using this in your emails.

If your emails are deleted without even opening, deleted instantly or left unread for months, these instances trigger spam filters and lower your sender rating. The lower rating will land your emails in the spam folder or get your sender identity blacklisted.

This can also happen when your subscribers don’t remember you. An average person subscribes to a lot of content on the Internet and most of the time it is due to many websites doesn’t allow viewing its content without subscribing. This will make him forget even subscribing to you. Your emails should be subjected such that it helps him remember subscribing to you.

If someone has legitimately subscribed to your content but your subject line, your sending address or physical address does not make your identity clears to the client. He will classify your email as spam. The email should get look, image and typography according to your brand logo or look to get the client to remember you.

Sometimes it is the content that you are sending is not according to spam filter standard. The HTML code that you use in your emails to make them more engaging should be clear and concise. The attachment with promotional emails should be avoided at all cost. The images though can make your email look eye-catching and engaging by the only image with little to no text will be interpreted as spam by the spam filter. A standard 600 to 800-pixel widths should be used.

3. You don’t get ethics right– Twitter may have you believe otherwise but there are few email manners and ethics that you should mind to keep your emails out of spam folder.

Many business send an email with a subject line that has nothing to do with the content of the email. A subject line such as "urgent notice" or "It was nice meeting you" surely can grab the attention of your people but when they open it they will not find this amusing. You should avoid using these tactics. Your subject line should reflect the content of your email.

Also Read: Email Prospecting Tips for Salespeople: Best Practices that Win Customers and Increase Conversion!

It is mandatory by CAN-SPAM act that you should include a unsubscribe links in your email so that people that no longer want to receive your mail and want no engagement with you could unsubscribe from your mailing list. This may sound bad for your business but this is a necessary practice to be followed. If you don’t do this practice then people will complain your emails as spam and monetary fine could also be imposed. You cannot force people in giving any survey answers for their opting out of your emails. The only thing that you could do is giving a link to visit your website and opt-out or unsubscribe from there.

Sometimes few businesses go overboard with promotional contents. Though a client has willingly subscribed to the emails that don’t give you a free hand to flood his inbox with your mails. Too many emails will make your customer feel bothered and they will either unsubscribe you or complain of spam.

Email personalization plays a huge role in this. You can sent client personalized email about the products they have searched, wish-listed or have bought earlier. This will surely grab his attention and he will be getting mail only for those offers which he finds interesting. It will help your business in scoring a better sender score as far as mail is concerned and also generate leads that are authentic and promising.

In conclusion

Your email campaign will become null and void if you are not able to make it no their inboxes. If you avoid doing these three mistakes then surely you will improve your chances in getting lost and forgotten in the spam land. Avoid making these mistakes, it will not only save your reputation as sender and money squandered on mail invalid and obsolete addresses. When email land in spam they give you a wrong picture of where your email campaign is heading. Steer clear of spam and you will get realistic statics on the success of your mailing strategy.

You can educate you are current subscribe on how to move your emails to the primary inbox, not in social and promotional boxes. This will improve your chances of engaging your subscriber and getting clear of spam radar. You could also use a spam test filter, spam checker or email optimization tool so that your sender score can improve. Litmus or mail tester is a few programs that can help you in improving your emailing campaign.

Hope these points make for keystones for your emailing strategy for your business. All the best.