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@nataliiapolomkina ă» Dec 23,2022 ă» 12 min read ă» 1223 views ă» Originally posted on mailtrap.io
Inbox placement rate (IPR) denotes emails that reached the recipientâs inbox rather than ending up in their spam or junk folder. Since 2015, the global IPR has grown from 79% to 85%. This means that only one in six commercial emails miss the target. Would you like to achieve this rate or even improve it for your marketing purposes? Below, youâll find a comprehensive guide on how to stop your emails from going to spam.
Letâs say your email campaign covered 1K recipients, and only 600 messages reached the target inboxes. The email was the same for all the recipients, but 400 of them filtered into spam by email service providers. So, whose fault was it? Both the sender and the recipient have a part to play here.Â
To reach the inbox, any email campaign has to comply with the requirements set by the recipientâs spam filters. These are a set of protocols that decide whether to let in an incoming message or not. So, it is just an obstacle you need to know how to pass through. And if youâre aware of its working principles, youâll be able to handle it with ease.Â
The success of your email campaign is heavily reliant on filter technology. Filters not only block incoming messages but organize them as well. Today, many email service providers break down your messages by social, commercial, newsletters, and other categories. They leverage specific criteria to evaluate an incoming message and place it to the relevant folder.Â
Spam filters work in the same way and assign a spam score to the message. If the score meets a certain threshold, the email will be inboxed. Otherwise, youâll find it in the spam folder. There is a long list of spam criteria, and it gets modified and adapted every day. The filtering practices are usually undisclosed, but we know that they include the following focus areas.Â
Spam filters can differ by not only the criteria to be assessed but also how they are implemented. Here are the most common options:
Combating spam looks pretty simple. But each type of email filter comprises many protocols or rules to be followed. For example, header filters are not limited to the information in the headers. They take into account the reputation of a senderâs domain and IP address, check email authentication policy, and so on. Nevertheless, there is no magic in dealing with spam filters, and weâll teach you how to make your email campaign spam-proof.Â
Email filters will assess the reputation of your domain based on the following metrics:
Authentication is another vital element of your domain reputation. It is a must-have thing for any legitimate sender to protect the domain against phishing and spoofing. Email authentication rests on three widely adopted standards:
Blacklist is a crucial metric for measuring the IP address reputation. You should not be listed in any blacklist from BRBL to Return Path. If for some reason you have been, make sure to launch a blacklist-removal process. The most challenging thing here is to find out the reason.
Apart from that, some email filters consider other metrics like complaints, spam trap hits, rejected messages, and so on. The type of IP address, dedicated or shared, is also important.
Hence, it is advisable to opt for the dedicated option if your email campaign exceeds 500K emails every week.Â
A new IP address is like a brand new car â it needs a break-in period. Email service providers apply restricting measures to new addresses to combat spammers. As a result, if you send a high volume of emails right away, a significant batch may get to the spam folder. Hence, you should load your new IP address step by step. Once you show consistent traffic, your ESP will identify your IP address as legitimate, and the restriction will be off.
Some time ago, the content was the primary catch of spam email filters. They checked incoming messages for spam trigger keywords, blacklisted links, and other inappropriate elements. Today, the content check is of lower priority than the senderâs reputation, but content filters are still actionable.
Pay particular attention to this element of your email campaign. With a weak subject line, you will still be able to pass spam filters. But a recipient can mark your email as spam which will impair your sender reputation.Â
Recipients tend to distrust in unreadable and grammatically poor text. Besides, content filters may put your email campaign to spam if the number of spelling errors in your body text is high enough. Therefore, make sure to check grammar and proofread your body text. Readability is also crucial for positive recipient engagement, so mind that too.Â
If you combine a plain text with an image in your email campaign, keep a balanced content ratio â 60% plain text and 40% image. The thing is that spam filters may catch an email if they cannot scan the text due to large images.Â
It is a regular practice for email marketers to send multi-part messages that contain both plain text and HTML. The latter lets you improve the engagement of your emails and make the content eye-catching. And here, you have to be cautious as well. An HTML section that has formatting errors or broken tags is a sure way to the spam box. Always check your HTML content before sending it.
It was already mentioned that an embedded image should not exceed 40% of the total message body. Also, it might be useful to avoid heavy images at all. As an alternative, you can compress the image and link to it on your web server or any credible service. This will decrease the message size and accelerate the processing and loading of the email campaign.Â
An attachment is a red flag for email filters. Solid email filters will put a commercial or transactional email with an attachment in spam right away. So, the best you can do is to provide a link to a particular file placed on your website or another credible location.Â
Abuse of media content in your email campaign increases the spamminess of your message. Besides, it reduces the recipientâs engagement. If there are some media your campaign canât do without, add a link to it. Also, avoid dynamic scripts â spam filters wonât let them in. Â
In this blog post about email testing tools, youâll find a comprehensive selection of email content previewers and checkers. Some services like Litmus or Email on Acid are full-fledged email preview tools. HTML Email Check or PutsMail focus on HTML content only. To check your subject line, you can opt for Email Subject Line Grader or Send Check It. Hemingwayapp is a perfect solution to validate your text readability.Â
If you want high-level deliverability, make sure your recipients are engaged. Intricate email filters do assess engagement, which comprises the following metrics:
Itâs most likely that youâre using the same metrics to measure the effectiveness of your email campaign. But before this, you need to be sure that the email will hit the inbox. And here is what you should take care of.
Follow-up is another way to earn the credibility of email service providers. When you follow up with your recipients, you show that you want to engage them. But the balance here is important. Massive email attacks within short periods are suspicious and can lead to the spam folder. Remind about yourself once a week or two (depending on your activity). Also, this contributes to the progress of your domain reputation. Â
If your email campaign lacks an unsubscribe button/link, thatâs also a good way to end up in the spam folder. Email service providers identify bulk emails as spam if no opt-out option is available. This is legal due to the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing) Act of 2003. So, if you think that you can improve the unsubscribe rate by omitting this button or link in your transactional emails, youâre making a mistake.Â
Letâs say youâve carried out all the steps above and are ready to launch your campaign. Hold on a second, the last step remains. Pick an email spam checker and test your email. Youâve got many options to choose from including Mailtrap, Mail Tester, GlockApps, and so on. For some spam checkers, you need to send your email to a specified address, and then you get a report. You can view your message, learn how to improve it, find out the authentication and blacklist status, and see if any broken links are there.Â
Other tools can assess your email without sending it. Just paste all the content of your message including headers and youâll see what is missing and how likely it is to be trapped by SpamAssassin. Once youâve managed to reach the highest score, the email campaign can be launched. We hope your IPR wonât fall below 90%. Good luck!
I hope you enjoyed reading our guide on how to prevent your email from getting into a spam folder. This material was initially written by Piotr Malek, Technical Content Writer at Mailtrap Email Delivery Platform. Check the article on the Mailtrap blog.
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