Are you worried that your emails aren't reaching your customers’ inbox? Are you concerned that your bottom line will take a hit because of how spam filters process your messages? Or have you already seen the stats that your emails go to spam instead of the inbox and  looking for help to avoid this from happening anymore?

If you said yes to any of the above , then don’t worry. We’ve got you covered! In this blog, we’re not only going to tackle the main question "why do emails go to spam?" but also we’re going to offer the solutions you're looking for.

Best of all, you’ll be able to fix the problems yourself  - no need for expertise, knowledge or specialist experience - these solutions all relate to things you'll know about, like how you’re building and managing your email list or currently constructing your email templates.

So without further ado, here are the 7 reasons why your emails might be going to the spam folder and what you can do to prevent them from doing so from now on.

1. You don’t have permission to contact those on your list

You may of heard of people downloading emailing lists from the Internet or buying them from another company, or maybe you've done one of the following yourself and thought it’s OK to send them marketing emails as long as you give them the option to unsubscribe. However, that’s definitely not the case.

Regulations like the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have become stricter about how businesses handle customer personal information. Each one of these regulations has made it clear that simply offering an unsubscribe option is not enough to offer your email subscribers a way out, if they haven't signed up to get your emails.

So before you start sending out any more emails, you should make sure that you have permission to do so. If you neglect that, you’re not only risking your emails going straight to the spam folder, but you could also be liable to a fine.

If you're still:

• buying or downloading email lists from the ‘reputable sites’
• filling your email campaigns with contacts from Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, or any other place where you’ve interacted with people
• automatically adding people to your list from the checkout page
• using a pre-checked newsletter consent checkbox in your web form...

STOP!

For help building your emailing list the right, check out our blog 'How to Build an Email List from Scratch'. There you will find the answers you're looking for.

And if you’re unsure whether it’s OK to contact some of the people already in your email database, why not run a reconfirmation campaign? This is a simple email asking the contacts you have now if they want to stay on your list. For advice and guidance on this, click HERE.

It’s not clear what your subscribers are signing up for

Transparency is key, especially when it comes to reaching out to your target audience and building your client/customer base. When filling out your signup form, the individual needs to be fully aware of what kind of emails they’re going to be receiving from you and your company in the future. You cannot advertise one service and send emails about another one, unless you’ve specified that on the form they filled out.

Be crystal clear from the get go - inform them on what you’re going to discuss in your emails – and DELIVER on that promise. When you do that, you’ll see that your unsubscribe numbers will drop significantly and your sender reputation will improve.

Our top advice is to make sure that your online form, the thank you page following it, and your welcome email clearly state what the person has signed up for. Doing this early in the process improves your chances of building strong relationships with your audience, and reduces the chances of your emails falling into the spam folder.

You’re making it difficult to unsubscribe

This is, without a doubt, one of the top reasons why your emails might be reported as spam. If someone wants to stop receiving marketing communication from a particular sender, the last thing they want to do is to spend time and effort looking for a way to unsubscribe. If they find it difficult, they'll report the message as spam or manually move it to their spam box. In both cases, you're at loss.

Here’s a list of things you need to avoid ASAP:

• Hiding the unsubscribe link below the main part of your footer
• Making your recipients contact you to resign from the newsletter
• Instructing your recipients to log into some form of a panel to change their mailing preferences or unsubscribe
• Taking too long to process the person's request to unsubscribe and be removed from your mailing list

If you are guilty of any of the above, you're a step closer to having your emails regularly marked as spam and having them negatively evaluated by Internet Service Providers’ (ISPs) spam filters.

You're not emailing your database frequently enough (or too much)

Sending an email every couple of months or worse one every quarter? You're not allowing your database to remember you and they'll deliberately ignore your emails (maybe even mark them as spam). Or think about it from the recipients' point of you, if you're not frequently contacting them and they miss one or two emails, they lose the chance of seeing your content for several months straight. That's a lot of time to go without your content and not thinking about your business.

Also sending emails just now and again to a big email list can alert ISPs about sudden email blasts, and might cause temporary blocks, higher bounce rates, and more emails going to the junk folder. It's a big no no.

On the other hand, what if you're emailing too frequently? The recipients get annoyed and start ignoring your emails. They'll stop engaging if they feel like you're bombarding them and filling their inbox with unnecessary info, and because of that, ISPs such as Gmail or Outlook move your email to the spam folder.

Opt for a more structured approach when it comes to the frequency of your emails. Once a week is a popular go-to, it's not overwhelming but allows the recipients to remember your name and what you offer. Work out what frequency works for you and your emailing list - every email needs to be content packed with only quality information your database want and need. So figure out how you can be informative and meet the needs for your recipients.

Your emails are image-heavy (and text-light!)

Are you adding lots of imagery to make your emails nice and pretty, and using less text for (insert reason)?

While this may seem like a good strategy – after all, people like images and don't want to get overwhelmed by text heavy emails. But there are two problems with this approach.

One is that, unless you provide the ALT text to the image, consumers that use screen readers may have trouble reading your content. Plus, with so many email clients blocking images automatically messages that don’t have the ALT text provided look rather unappealing.

The second one is that ISPs see images a bit differently. Lots of heavy images make emails heavy and ISPs want to process as many emails as possible. But by making your email image-heavy, you’re making this process for ISPs more difficult and resource-consuming than it should be. And because of that, they sometimes choose to filter emails like this unfavourably and place them in the spam folder.

That isn’t to say that all emails that contain lots of images will go to spam. Some with high deliverability and high subscriber engagement can often get away with slightly heavier newsletters. But I’m going to assume that this isn’t you since you’re reading this blog right now.

But what abut the text side of things - what if there's little text to read? ISPs also look at the amount of text that’s visible in your emails. They check the text-to-image ratio to evaluate the quality of the messages you're sending your database. So the higher the text ratio compared to images the better. For more on text to image ratios in emails, click HERE.

Your email engagement rates are low

The more your database interact with your emails, the better your chances are at avoiding the spam folder. The lower your engagement rates are, the more careful you have to be about how you run your email campaigns. You'll need to put extra effort to have your emails delivered successfully and improve your engagement rates.

Here's a list of ways you can make your email more interesting and imrpove your engagement rates:

• Make your emails mobile friendly
• Optimise the power of a catchy subject line
• Add clear Call-To-Action (CTAs) buttons to your emails (i.e Learn More, Buy Now, Book Today)
• Write fun copy your recipients will love to read and spend more time with your email open
• Personalise your emails for each recipient

You’re linking to low quality websites or misinformation

It's important for you to know that ISPs will not only analyse your email’s content, but also the links within the text, images and CTAs. If you’re trying to improve your email deliverability because they’re getting flagged as spam, here are several things to avoid (when it comes to the links you use):

• linking to too many different domains
• linking to websites that have a low domain reputation
• using links that redirect users many times
• using suspicious link shorteners
• having a small text-to-link ratio

Overall, you should check the quality of the websites you’re linking to and the number of links you're choosing to use in your email as well. Again, the higher the text-to-link ratio, the better.

Now that you’ve learned these 7 reasons why your emails could be going to spam folder instead of the inbox and how you can change this, it’s time you start improving your email deliverability. After all, the saying is "there's no time like the present".

Final Thoughts

If you’re unsure about any of the factors mentioned above, just reach out to us in the comments or click HERE to schedule a one-to-one and we’ll do what we can to help you out.