Email marketing is still big and is used by most companies to communicate useful information to their users and increase sales. However, not all your emails land in your user’s inbox. As a matter of fact, a study conducted by Return Path revealed that only 79% of emails land in the user’s inbox while the rest either get blocked or go to spam. What’s the reason behind it? Webmail providers study your recipient’s behaviour closely and flag the quality of your emails accordingly. This means your subscribers could flag your email though you might not be spamming. Before you get down to cracking solutions, first look at the various reasons due to which your emails might be getting marked as spam.
1. You didn’t seek permission
The worst thing you can do is sending emails to those people who did not sign up for it. Why would they welcome emails they didn’t ask for? People opt for unethical and unproductive ways such as buying email data, or physically entering email ids from purchased data. But instead, put in an attractive subscription form on your website and ask your visitors whether they’d like to be emailed about important things.
2. Your IP was used for spam
Even if you’re not sending spam emails at the moment, there are chances that the email service provider, you are using, have been marked as spam at some point. And therefore when you use the same service provider, your emails also bear the brunt of it. So do your research and use the services of a reputable email service provider.
3. Your subscribers forgot about you
If your emails are being reported spam by your users, your mailbox provider is recording this information and will eventually stop your mails from reaching inboxes. You might find it strange that your users are flagging you as spam even though you took permission from them. One of the main reasons for this is that they forgot and do not recognize you through your email. The wise thing to do here is brand your emails correctly. Use the same logo, colour palette, language, etc. for your website and your emails so that users recognize you.
4. You have low open rates
Your webmail service providers are reading the response of your email receivers to mark your emails. So if your emails are never opened or are directly deleted from the inbox without being opened, they’re likely to send you to the spam folder. Due to such inbox placement issues, around 26% of email campaigns are flagged as spam. To avoid this, work on your open rates. Putting better personalised subject lines, segmenting your list, etc. might help.
5. You used misleading subject lines
According to a survey conducted by Litmus and Fluent, around 50% users feel cheated by opening a promotional email that has a misleading subject line. You might think you’d never do something like that but knowingly or unknowingly, such mistakes do happen. For example, you just wrote an article about ’10 things never to say at an interview’ but you use the subject line ‘RE: CURRENTLY IN OFFICE’ to make it feel like an office email. Do not resort to such things as it has permanent subsequence.
6. You used the wrong ‘From’ information
You have to give out the right ‘from’, ‘to, and ‘reply to’ information. People think this is an easy way to get email opens but anything that cheats customers work against you in the long run. You can’t say your email is sent by Elon Musk or the President of America right! Make yourself recognisable and treat your customers with honesty. If you give them valuable emails, odds are they’ll like it.
7. You forgot to put unsubscribe link
It is important that you mention some kind of registered address on your emails. This increases the trust factor among your receivers and lets email service providers know you’re genuine. If you don’t have an office, you can use your postal address you use for official purposes.
This one’s compulsory. You might think your emails are precious and everyone should read it, but you still have to give your users the option to opt out anytime they want. Failing to do this might not just send you to spam but also cost you hefty fines. And once a user asks to be unsubscribed, you need to honour his request and process it at the earliest.
8. Use of Spamy Words
You email service provider might have built in tools to scan your emails for spam trigger words and if it identities some being used, your emails will never see the face of inbox. There are online tools available that you may use to check your emails for such things and avoid any spam words as far as possible. Some of the commonly knows words are amazing, great offer, congratulations, guarantee, order now, risk free, special promotions, etc.
9. You have low mailbox usage
Around 19% of emails fail to deliver due to low mailbox usage. Email providers check the quality of your receivers. And if a large proportion of the emails you’re sending out are to dead email ids that are never used or are about to expire, you’re marked negatively. To avoid this, refresh your list every few months and check who’s engaging with your emails. Send mails to those users only.
10. You do not follow HTML best practises
Most companies use Image + Text emails as they’re more appealing and better for branding. However, if you’re doing so, you need to follow optimal HTML practises as well. Keeping image pixels within 600px-800px, using clean HTML codes, using low image to text ratio, using simple fonts are some of the practises. You need to do in-depth research on this to fully understand this concept.
Avoid all the above mentioned practises diligently and your email deliverability is bound to get better.
Author Bio: Catherrine Garcia is a passionate blogger and a freelance Web Developer. She along with her group of freelance developers, are experts of creating Websites on CMS.
