It’s hard enough to get people to open your newsletter when they can see your email in their inbox with the rest of their emails, but if your newsletter goes straight to their spam folder and they never see it in the first place, their chances of opening it decrease significantly.
As if spam filters weren’t hard enough to get around to begin with, they go through updates like anything else and sometimes the emails you send to your subscribers start getting sent straight to their spam filters.
Since you don’t get notified when your email goes to a recipient’s spam folder, one of the best indications your emails got caught in email spam filters is if you suddenly see your open rate drop. If you’ve tested and retested your headline, your send times, etc., and you’re still getting sent straight to spam, then it’s likely not the user who’s deleting your emails right away … it’s their spam filter.
If you think your newsletter might be getting caught in your recipient’s email spam filter, here are some things you can do to liberate your newsletter from email jail.
Table of Contents
- Require Them to Opt in Twice
- Manage Your IP Reputation
- Avoid Certain Words
- Ask Your Subscribers to Approve You (and Telling Them How to Do It)
- Provide Value
- Avoid Sending Emails with Attachments
- Keep Up to Date with Privacy and Anti-Spam Laws
- Use Images Carefully
- Conclusion
1) Require Them Opt in Twice
Whether someone fills out a form on your website or checks a box somewhere that signs them up for your newsletter, make sure it’s only the first step they have to complete in order to subscribe to your newsletter. Sending a follow-up email that requires them to confirm their subscription is a great way to make sure they really want to receive your emails and to avoid getting caught in their spam filter.
2) Manage Your IP Reputation
Email providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo, Apple Mail, etc., keep track of the IP addresses sending emails to their users. Any time a large number of emails comes from a single IP address, it sends up a red flag, but that goes double if the IP address is a new one.
So if you recently moved and got a new IP address, take some time to build a solid reputation for that IP address by sending a few emails at a time. Then build your way up so that, by the time you get to the point of sending out emails to all your subscribers, your IP address has a solid reputation and will be less likely to raise any red flags with email providers.
3) Avoid Certain Words
Emails that talk about “money”, “cash”, “income”, etc. all tend to be pretty sketchy, and most of us report those as spam without even opening them. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Email spam filters have also caught on to the patterns we all tend to see in the emails that get deleted right away, so if you use certain words or phrases in your email subject line, your email is much more likely to be deleted.
Here’s a list of words to avoid, courtesy of HubSpot:
4) Ask Your Subscribers to Approve You (And Tell Them How to Do It)
Your welcome email should explain to your new subscribers what they can expect from your newsletter, but it should also remind them to add you to their list of approved contacts in their email settings to make sure they don’t lose any of the juicy information you’ll be providing for them in your newsletter.
To improve the likelihood they’ll follow through and actually add you to that list, you should provide instructions on exactly how they can add you to their approved contacts. Bonus points for providing different instructions for different email providers (i.e. one set of instructions for Gmail users, one set of instructions for Yahoo users, etc.).
5) Provide Value
Not only do salesy newsletters have a lower chance of getting opened, they also have a higher chance of getting sent straight to the spam folder. Furthermore, if your emails are not getting opened, they’re more likely to end up in the spam folder after a while.
To avoid that fate, make sure you thoroughly understand your target audience and that you’re sending newsletters at the right time, with the right headline, with content that interests them.
If your overall open rate is pretty strong, but you notice you have some email addresses that have never opened any of your newsletters (or haven’t opened any of them for a long time), send them an email asking if they’d like to be removed from your mailing list and letting them know they will be removed if they don’t respond at all. It could be that they’re no longer interested, it could be that they’re no longer using that email address, or maybe you’re getting sent to their spam folder so they’re not seeing your emails. Regardless of the reason, if someone isn’t seeing and/or doesn’t want to receive your newsletters anymore, you’re better off you just removing them from your mailing list.
6) Avoid Sending Emails with Attachments
Not only are emails with attachments more likely to get caught in the spam filter, they also take longer to load, which means your subscribers are less likely to stick around for the entire message to appear. Remember, we live in a world of instant gratification, so if it takes more than a few seconds for you to get your message in front of someone, the chances of you losing that prospect increase significantly.
If you have a call to action you want them to take (which you always should), instead of giving them an attachment, provide them with a link or a button that takes them to a landing page so they can access the information they need there.
7) Keep Up to Date with Privacy and Anti-Spam Laws
Most countries have anti-spam laws and privacy laws, so make sure your newsletter is compliant with all of those. Remember that a digital world is a global world, so don’t assume only people in your geographical area are subscribing to your newsletter. I have subscribers from all over the world, including countries whose primary language is not English, even though I only work in English, which is why I don’t have an email magnet. You might want to talk to a lawyer who specializes in that area to make sure everything about your website and your newsletter is compliant.
8) Use Images Carefully
It’s true that we are visual creatures and more likely to engage with visual content, but all your marketing content needs to be a balance of visual content and text. Remember that visual content takes longer to load, so if you have a lot of visual content in your newsletter, not only is it likely to take too long to load, but it’s also more likely to get caught in the email spam filter.
MailChimp recommends that most of your newsletters (805) be comprised of text, with images taking up no more than 20% of the space in your newsletter.
9) Conclusion
By now you should have a pretty good idea of how to avoid your subscribers’ spam folder. If you’re still struggling to create value-packed content for your subscribers (or you just don’t have the time to DIY), don’t forget that we offer newsletter writing services.
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