How to stop your email campaigns from ending in spam or promotion folder.

Few weeks ago, I stumbled on a tweet where the poster mentioned that their email marketing campaigns are ending up in Spam and Promotion folders. The poster further went to seek for help in increasing the number of their email campaigns that will go to inbox instead.

Just like the poster, many of us have been faced with this challenge at some stage of our email marketing efforts. In my own case, I thought my chosen email marketing platform was the issue to the extent that I started jumping from pole to pole, switching to different platforms until I learnt the trick.

The truth is, often times, experience is the best teacher and the more you practice, the better you become.

That said, I will list 5 reasons why your email campaigns end up in the recipient’s spam, junk or promotions folder and what you can do to avoid it.

1. Non-authentication of your email domain: Authentication is critical to the delivery of your email campaigns. It provides a trackable identifier that shows your recipient’s ISP that you’re a legitimate sender or business. Most email marketing platforms use DKIM for this.

Solution? Check with your email platform provider through the support/help function to find out how you can authenticate your email domain.

2. Your email campaigns have high hard bounce rate: This happens when you keep sending mails to a list of invalid or nonexistent email addresses.

Solution? Ensure that your list is organic and/or collected from your product/service subscribers.

3. You keep sending your emails to subscribers that don’t open them: Sometimes, I call this the act of village people. Cos these people won’t open your mails and neither would they unsubscribe. They would rather just keep deleting your emails as they enter their box.

Solution? Pruning your email list is the solution. Pruning is the process of getting rid of inactive subscribers from your list. It’s like trimming branches on a plant. You cut the dying parts off so that the healthy ones have enough room to grow. Removing inactive subscribers from my email list has increased my email open rate from 16% to 29% at some point.

4. You use spam trigger words in your content: Spam filters are sometimes triggered by certain words depending on the email provider. Some spam trigger words include:

- Money order

- Great offer

- Guarantee

- Increase sales

- Risk-free

- Special promotion

- This is not spam

Solution? Use less of these words or avoid using them at all.

5. You don’t add an “Unsubscribe” link: You can’t send emails without an unsubscribe link, it’s unethical. You need to give your subscribers a way out of your mails if they want to opt out for whatsoever reason. If you don’t, you could get spam complaints, or even get fined by regulators.

Solution? At the bottom of your emails, include an unsubscribe link.

Was this insightful and helpful enough? Do not hesitate to share.

Got more tips to share from your experience? Share in the comment.