How to Prevent My Campaigns From Going to Spam

One of the common challenges with email campaigns is that they may end up in the recipients’ spam or junk folder. Deliverability issues can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

The main problem with emails ending up in the spam or junk folder is that it reduces the chances of recipients actually seeing and engaging with your message. This is why it is important to identify and solve any deliverability problems you may be facing.

Check out this guide below, where we show you how to recognize if your campaigns are facing deliverability issues and provide you with the steps to fix it.

Identify if your campaign is going to spam

The first thing you must know is that, unfortunately, there is no way to check exactly the percentage of your sent campaigns that are reaching the spam folder. Still, we do have a way to identify if we are facing a deliverability problem:

First, we must know if we are reaching spam in a timely or widespread manner. We can get an idea by analyzing our current opening ratios: a campaign that reaches spam in a generalized way does not usually exceed 1 or 2% of the open rate.
With regard to the open rate, it is essential to put us in context: this will depend a lot on the type of email you send (for example, an order-receiving email or an automated email usually has a higher open rate than a newsletter), the sector you belong to and, very importantly, the quality of your subscriber list, which we will cover in this article.
How can I rate whether my sent campaigns face an acceptable opening percentage? All your subscribers can’t open your sent campaigns (although it would be great), but if your average open rate is from 7%, we can say that we are facing an open rate device. Beyond that percentage, we can say that you have a good opening ratio.
In this regard, it is important not to be alarmed by an isolated complaint from a subscriber that has reached spam. This can happen because the spam filter of an email service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) has been activated on time in some way. And that brings us to the next point.

How do antispam filters work?

Anti-spam filters are automated systems that sort incoming emails into different categories, such as spam, junk, or inbox. These filters work by analyzing various characteristics of an email, such as its content, sender information, and header information.

One of the main ways that anti-spam filters determine whether an email is spam is by analyzing the content of the message. Filters use complex algorithms to scan emails for keywords or phrases commonly found in spam messages. This includes subject lines that include all caps or exclamation points and specific words or phrases such as “free” or “earn money.” The filter may mark it as spam if the email contains a certain number of these keywords or phrases.

Another way anti-spam filters determine whether an email is spam is by analyzing the sender’s information. This includes the sender’s IP address, domain name, and email address. Filters may check to see if the email is being sent from a known spammer or if the IP address or domain has been blacklisted.

Anti-spam filters also consider the header information of an email, including the sender’s email address, subject line, and recipient’s email address. The email may be marked as spam if the recipient’s email address is not in the sender’s contact list.

It’s important to note that anti-spam filters are constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated, so what may not be considered spam today may be considered spam in the future. To ensure that your email campaigns are delivered to the inbox, it’s essential to follow best practices for email design and content and use tools like Email Authentication and Email Authentication like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

How do I prevent my campaign from going to spam?

Configure the DKIM and SPF

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Email ) and SPF ( Server Policy Framework ) are two authentication protocols that prove email senders’ identity. Setting them up is important to:

Do not reach the spam folder (since you will not activate the antispam response of a mail provider)
You will make sure to protect your subscribers from possible virtual scams in which your company name is used to steal information ( phishing )

Setting up DKIM and SPF in Sendarmy is easy. You don’t need technical knowledge for it, and you have a lot to benefit from. You only need to have your own domain for your sent campaigns (For example, [email protected]) and access your hosting provider (where you have purchased your domain). In this article, we explain how to do it step by step.

Use a good-quality list

The list to which emails are sent is the main success factor of an email marketing campaign. The quality of the list will largely determine the average behavior of your subscribers with your submissions (remember that this is a factor that can trigger anti-spam filters). It is, therefore of the utmost importance that you follow these good practices:

Do not use purchased, transferred, or public lists: to begin with because it is illegal, but you also can not expect great receptivity to your sent campaigns by people who have not consented to receive your communications. Sending emails to a not-very-active list will eventually lead to spam. In addition, likely, people are manually marking your submission as spam (in Sendarmy reports, it will be listed as a complaint), which potentially increases the likelihood that you will systematically spam in the long run.
Clean your lists regularly of old emails that do not exist (known as hard bounce or hard bounce ) and subscribers who never open your mailings. At first, it may seem that the greater the number of subscribers on a list, the greater the reach, but sending to lists with low interaction (they do not open your mailings regularly) can compromise your global deliverability in the long run and end up reaching spam.

If at first, you don’t know if you have a quality list or not, at Sendarmy, we have many resources on this subject to help you:

A specific ebook on how to build an email database ethically and efficiently. You can download it for free.
Articles on our blog about how to grow your list with quality subscribers interested in what you do (hint: content is king)
A complete and free email marketing course from beginner to expert level, where we pay close attention to this point
Within your Sendarmy lists, you can create segments by behavior (for example, for those who have never opened a submission) to identify inactive subscribers and delete them
You can use automated tools to automate list cleanup and identify emails that don’t exist in our PRO and Enterprise plans

And finally, do not hesitate to contact our support if you have questions. Remember that we are specialized in this matter, and we will advise you on what you need.

The sender of your campaign is important

Using an email address from a generic mail provider, such as Hotmail or Gmail, as the sender for your campaigns can trigger anti-spam filters. It’s important to be selective when choosing a sender for your email campaigns and to avoid using generic email addresses that may not be associated with your brand or organization.

The most important thing at this point is that you use an email that belongs to your domain. It is also highly recommended that the address exists and is not of the no-reply type so that your subscribers can contact you directly by replying to your emails.

It is common that emails reach spam if you send an email from your domain @tuempresa.com to another address in your domain. This is because the email provider knows that the email has not been sent from your domain but from a third party (the Sendarmy sending servers, in this case). But don’t worry; this is an easy solution if you configure DKIM and SPF.

Build your template correctly

The construction of the template is an important point not to activate content antispam filters.

We recommend using our template editor, which generates emails with the correct HTML. It is the best advice we can give you for many reasons. It creates tens of thousands of templates daily, respects standards, and renders correctly in all browsers, and the emails it creates adapt to different devices. We have over 260 fully customizable templates to suit your brand image and shipping needs, but if you need a template specifically created for you, our design team can create a custom template for you.
If you want to import your HTML template, ensure it has the correct HTML.
Avoid as much as possible that your email consists of simply an image with text (this is a common practice of spammers and can raise “suspicion” for mail providers).
It is also important to not use words in the subject or the body of the email that can activate antispam filters.

Preserve the reputation of your domain

If you’ve previously sent some campaigns that have been considered spam (to a greater or lesser extent) or sent to a list of a lot of non-existent emails (hard bounce or hard bounce), you may need to do your best to improve your domain’s reputation and the campaign’s sending email. A good way to increase your reputation would be to make quality sent campaigns, following the tips we have shown you and gradually increasing the number of subscribers.

The last factor that influences deliverability is the quality of the IPs and sending servers, which is at our expense. In Sendarmy, we usually monitor the IPs and sending servers to ensure their quality. Also, all our shipping servers are located in Spain, so there is no data transfer outside the European Union, and you can easily comply with the GDPR.