Cenacore
Cenacore.
Earn more with every email you send: join our newsletter.
Want to learn more?

Learn how to earn more with every email you send and keep your emails out of spam with the Cenacore newsletter.

Why your emails land in spam and how to fix it

Email Deliverability

Your emails are worthless unless they land in your recipient’s inbox.

Unfortunately, there are five issues that many people seem to overlook and then wonder why all their emails are going to spam.

Worse, most of these will earn your email a direct trip to the spam folder without any chance of reaching the inbox.

You might look at some of these and think that they’re simple. However, that’s usually the first sign that you’ve made one of them.

We’ve had clients with lots of experience in email marketing and setting up domains make some of these exact mistakes and not even realize it.

Let’s get on to the first mistake.

Top 5 Mistakes

Not setting up SPF, DMARC, and DKIM DNS records


SPF, DMARC, and DKIM DNS records are how your recipient's email servers authenticate that the sender of the email is valid and has permission to be sending email on behalf of your domain

If these DNS records don’t exist or aren’t set up correctly, many email servers will send your emails directly to spam as they’re likely to be spam or phishing.

Using obvious spam techniques


Quality emails always win. Sometimes, it can be tempting to look at spammers and see that they’re sending lots of emails all the time, think they must be getting good engagement if they’re still sending and try to copy them.

Unfortunately, this will have the complete opposite effect. Spam filters are very good at catching these kinds of techniques and will banish your emails to the spam folder every time.

The techniques you should avoid include:

  • Using special characters to break up words or phrases (e.g., "Fr3e" or “W3lc0me”).
  • Bad links: Avoid linking to unreputable sites or content or using URL shorteners. Spammers will use URL shorteners to hide the real destination of their links or use unreputable sites to relay or redirect you to the real URL.
  • Crafting subject lines to make it seem like you’re replying to an email from the recipient or implying some previous communication that never happened.
  • Writing HTML emails in Microsoft Word or other webpage builders. These types of HTML builders tend to include extra formatting or code that isn’t optimized for emails. Using these to design your emails will not only cause them to look weird in your recipients' email viewers but increase your spam score as well.
  • Too many images and not enough text. Spam filters get suspicious when you embed text inside of your images or send emails that are all-image or mostly images and no text. Ensure you have lots of text, and the images you do use add value to your email.
  • USING ALL-CAPS WHEN IT’S NOT NECESSARY. This makes your message seem salesy, sketchy, and possibly suspicious. It can be tempting to do this in the subject to be noticed in a full inbox, but more likely, it will get you in the spam folder.

Low-Quality lists


Just because someone is on your list doesn’t mean they’re going to open your emails. It can be tempting to purchase a list or remove opt-in controls to get your list to grow fast. However, this leads to low quality, which will cause you more issues than they’re worth.

Why?

  • There is a low likelihood they’re actually interested in what you’re sending. If you’re selling something, there is a low likelihood anyone will buy
  • There is no good way to verify or validate bought lists. They could include spam traps, which report all emails they receive as spam or dead email addresses, leading to bounces, which can also impact your spam score.
  • Sketchy list-building practices often lead to a higher rate of spam complaints because recipients aren’t aware they even subscribed to your list.

Low engagement/open rate


Spam filters are getting smarter each day and look at many more signals than just the content of the emails these days.

If lots of recipients from the same email provider don’t engage or open your emails, it’s likely the email provider will notice and increase your spam score because it appears to them that nobody is interested in your emails.

To combat this, ensure you have a quality list and you’re sending content to your list that they’re interested in receiving.

Did you send an email, and nobody read or responded? Maybe the content wasn’t what they wanted.

Provide a way to unsubscribe


If someone can’t figure out how to unsubscribe, the other easy option is simply to report the email as spam.

Only some people who subscribe to your list will be fully interested in your emails. They may have subscribed for a specific email or to receive a freebie. It’s better to let the low-interest people unsubscribe, giving them a clear way to do so.
Tactics like hiding the unsubscribe button or changing the color to make it hard to find aren’t going to keep people on your list. It’s going to motivate them to report your emails to spam instead.

If you want to keep people on your list, what works better than gaming unsubscribes is to build a quality list and send quality emails that your list is eager to receive.

Summary/TL;DR


To sum things up here, there are three things I’d like you to remember.

  1. Make sure your domain is authenticated ( SPF, DMARC, and DKIM)
  2. Send honest, quality, legitimate emails
  3. Build a quality list, asking people to opt in and don’t buy lists
  4. Write your emails for high open/engagement
  5. Provide a way to unsubscribe

If you’d like to learn more about how to keep the emails you send out of your recipient’s spam folders, then subscribe to our newsletter, as there is a lot more coming!