Why does email go to SPAM instead of Inbox?
Lately, a lot of SPAM has been sent globally and because of that, the filters and technology that deals with this are becoming more and more rigorous. Rigorous filters can accidentally put a regular email in the SPAM folder, even though it is not a spam email. Here's why emails most often go to SPAM and how to prevent it:
Check the status of your cPanel first
Check your Deliverability status in your cPanel, read more about here. If there are any errors there, you need to correct them.
Track the reports of your emails
Check what is being sent, who is sending it and what statuses appears during sending and receiving emails. You can easily follow all this in your cPanel, read the instructions here.
You are using “triggers”and therefore your email is recognized as spam
Some words are classified as safe triggers to be SPAM if your email contains those words. Here is an example:
- amazing
- cancel at any time
- check or money order
- click here
- congratulations
- dear friend
- for only ($)
- free or toll-free
- great offer
- guarantee
- increase sales
- order now
- promise you
- risk-free
- special promotion
- this is not spam
- winner
Try to use these words as little as possible.
Don’t write all capital letters
This is another "trigger". DO NOT WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS, primarily because it is considered shouting, and then because your email will be classified as SPAM.
Punctuation!!!????
Do not repeat punctuation marks !!!!??????…….,,,,,:::::::: The same goes for currency symbols as well as special symbols ($#”)($’%’$()%).
Subscriber engagement - Engagement Rates
Whether someone has subscribed to your newsletter list (or maybe not), most providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, have to decide whether an email is SPAM or not relying on this detail. A subscriber engagement is an action that an email recipient takes after receiving an email from you. If you have a low Engagement Rate it is very possible that your emails will not go in the Inbox. Example: You sent 50 emails to Gmail today. Out of 50 emails, the recipients you sent opened only 2 emails. Gmail is suspicious of this and is starting to feel that you are sending unsolicited emails. In the event that one of the recipients marks you as SPAM, accidentally or intentionally, your emails will start going to SPAM when you send to Gmail in general.
You have not received permission to send emails to any address
This is important. If you send to unknown addresses people who do not expect your e-mail, there is a high probability that someone will mark you as SPAM and you will become a spammer. Keep in mind that if you send to the addresses of people who have registered on your site for some reason and do not expect a newsletter from you, there is still a chance that they will mark you as SPAM (for example, they registered on your site for another reason and you did not write anywhere that you would send them emails from time to time).
Your IP address was used to send SPAM and now is blacklisted
Distinguish two IP addresses here:
Your local IP address of the Internet you are using: If your ISP has assigned you an IP address that is listed as "spam" on the SPAM RBL lists, your emails will either go to the recipients' SPAM folder or will not even reach the recipients.
IP address for your mail-server: This is the IP address of your hosting from which your emails work. If you use shared hosting, the IP address is shared by multiple users and you can easily suffer the consequences of a problem caused by another user. For example, this rarely happens, but we definitely recommend separating and using separate dedicated hosting with dedicated IP address.
Your subscribers don't remember you
If you made the newsletter list in 2017 and have just started sending e-mails (in 2020), there is a high probability that people do not remember you, that is, they do not remember that they signed up to receive e-mails from you at all. As a result, they can easily start deleting your emails without opening them or even marking you as SPAM. Take care of your subscribers and occasionally remind them that you exist. If you have an old email list, it is better not to send to that list than to risk being marked as a spammer.
Low Mailbox Usage
This is similar to Subscriber engagement - Engagement Rates. Large providers rely on whether the email addresses you send to are active in terms of your emails but also in general in terms of any actions that are not even related to you. If the e-mail address is "abandoned" and you send emails to that address and you have another 10-15-40-90 such "abandoned" recipients, it sends a signal to SPAM filters and says that you are probably sending random emails without knowing whether that someone reads or reacts to what you are doing. It is very possible that this will cause your emails to be marked as SPAM.
To prevent this from happening, regularly clean your email addresses and lists and send only to addresses that you know are active and can respond to your emails.
The email address is not related to the content of the email
It is illegal to write the subject of the e-mail so that it seems tempting to the recipient and attracts him to read what is in the e-mail. So, don't use tricks to finish your part of the job. Make sure you always write the correct subject of the e-mail and that it refers to what is in the e-mail.
You did not enter your physical address in the email
Most mail providers appreciate the practice that in each e-mail there is a written physical address of the sender of the e-mail. If you are a legal entity, a company, try to write the headquarters of your company in the signature of the e-mail. In this way, you let the recipient of the e-mail know that you are a trusted sender and that your e-mails are authentic.
You have not set a link for Unsubscribe (if you are sending a newsletter)
If you are sending a newsletter and you do not have a properly placed link for Unsubscribe from the newsletter list, it is very likely that your email will be classified as SPAM.
The HTML form of your email is not well set
If you only send text emails, without pictures and links, you don't have to worry about this. However, if you are sending different emails and have a special design, this is recommended:
- let the width be 600-800 px
- use clean HTML code
- never just send a picture in an email without text next to the picture
- do not use high resolution for images in emails
- use nice and legible fonts
- optimize the HTML form for phones
Ask recipients to indicate that your email is not SPAM
Ask email recipients to whitelist your email addresses. Your emails will not go to SPAM after that. If the emails have already gone to SPAM, ask the recipients to indicate that your emails are not SPAM.
Malicious recipient or accidentally marking your email as SPAM
If you send emails to someone who thinks it's inappropriate, they may mark your email as SPAM and you can't stop them. It even happens that someone accidentally marks you as SPAM and it is already difficult to track down because even the recipients is not aware of what they did.
