One of the most fundamental reasons why your emails are not getting to the inbox is the fact that mailbox providers have developed advanced anti-spam technologies to protect your customers' inboxes from spammers. Unfortunately, even a legitimate sender could be affected.
In this article, we will talk about the content of your email messages; for more information on other aspects influencing your email placement, check this article.
Brand Image
Let's agree that one of the most critical aspects when choosing whether to open an email is your brand recognition. Various factors may help you with it, including the name of your store/company, your company logo, brand colors, fonts, etc.
The reputation associated with your brand will be important not only for your customers when deciding whether to open your emails or ignore them but for the email providers as well. Here are some of the aspects you should consider:
Be Consistent with the Sender's Name
In other words, do not switch between your personal name and your company name. Just choose one and stick with it.
In most situations, it is much better to use a company or brand name over an individual person's name unless that person is the brand, like Madonna or Jamie Oliver. If you have a reason to use a person's name and it is not a brand, follow it with a dash, then specify the company or organization you are from.
Pay Special Attention to Your Subject Lines
When creating your subject line, you really have to keep in mind two things:
Do not make false promises – clickbaity subject lines that oversell the content in your email may seem like a good idea at first, but it will hurt you down the road. If your users feel like the value of your email content is not what you promise, they will get frustrated. And what is the result of that? An unsubscribe, or even worse, report as spam. This will harm your sender's reputation.
Make the subject line interesting and relevant – As we mentioned before, you should not oversell your content. But, you should still make your subject line attractive and consistent, which will result in more openers and boost your sender reputation.
Use a Matching Preheader
You already know that the sender's name, subject line, and preheader are the first things subscribers see.
Even if most of your subscribers open your messages on the subject line alone, the rest are influenced by other things. While they will likely see the sender's name first, the preheader still plays a role. This is especially useful for email campaigns with shorter subject lines because, in this case, the preheader will take up more space.
Email Message Content
Image-to-Text Ratio
While images and other visual content can make emails more engaging, it's also essential to maintain the right balance between images and text. It is one of the first factors most Spam filters check before deciding which inboxes your emails should be delivered to.
Although there isn't definitive evidence that having a good text-to-image ratio always helps, it's still likely that it could favor how well your emails perform. A sentence or two of text should be included to balance each image you have.
Avoiding Spammy Content
Some spam filters don't like the way certain content is phrased. Take a look below at some common mistakes that should be avoided:
Excessive use of exclamation points!!!!!!
Using phrases like "Click here!" or "Once in a lifetime opportunity!"
USING A LOT OF ALL CAPS IN THE SUBJECT LINE AND IN THE BODY TEXT. Don't do that (especially in subject lines).
Sending a test to multiple recipients within the same company (your colleagues). The company's email firewall may assume it's a spam attack.
Hash-busting: Inserting random characters in the subject line or content to fool spam filters, e.g., "F.ree. p.r! z.e"
Be careful with words associated with the language of sales. You can still use them, but don't use them too often. If overused, they may trigger spam filters and route your emails to junk folders. Risky words include: "prize", "free", "bonus", etc.
Simplify the Opt-Out Process
As a marketer, you should know that you're required to give subscribers a chance to opt out at any time. The CAN-SPAM Act actually requires this. But here is the thing. You should not only want to allow subscribers to opt out, but you also need to make it incredibly easy for them to do so. Why? If someone can't quickly find the unsubscribe box, they may end up marking your email as spam in order to avoid receiving future emails from you.
Adding an unsubscribe button in an easily visible location that people can find without any fuss would be the right thing to do. Finally, be sure that you provide them with some sort of confirmation that they have successfully unsubscribed.
Optimize Your Emails for Mobile
Statistics show that more than half of email messages are opened on mobile phones. Even if your emails are mobile-friendly, here are the two most significant mobile email fails that lots of clients make:
A Typeface that is too small (it should be 12 points or larger)
Links that are too close to one another. Links need to be clickable without having to zoom in.
Avoid URL Shorteners
You might often have deliverability problems if you use URL or link shorteners in your email content. Link shortening is a popular tool among spammers and phishers because it hides their identity. When a subscriber clicks on a shortened link, they are navigated to a fraudulent web page that may contain malware or to a site used to steal information.
Dealing with Emails Landing in Spam
In case your emails start landing in spam, there are a couple of ways you can resolve this issue:
Make sure you are following all of the above-mentioned best practices and preventive tactics. Test everything with different email providers and carefully estimate the result.
Look through all of the aspects influencing the delivery of your emails and adjust your sending behavior accordingly.
If this doesn't help, please contact our support so we can check if there are any issues on our end. We might be able to offer to sign SPF and DKIM records, move you to a dedicated IP, move to another one, sign your sender's domain, and more. The particular steps depend on the case and would be recommended by our Deliverability team.
If you have more questions - contact us at [email protected].