How to GUARANTEE YOUR EMAILS GO TO SPAM.
I appreciate this is alot of text, I spent considerable time collecting this informtion from Amazon, Google and Microsofts docs on the type of emails they block, the best practices and the rules they enforece.
I use this information, I believe it is worth reading for anyone trying to take email marketing seriously.
| # | Category | GUARANTEE YOUR EMAILS GO TO SPAM | REASON YOUR EMAILS GO TO SPAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sender Email | Sending from hotmail.com gmail.com yahoo.com | not only is it unprofessional & untrustworthy but If an ISP notices a large volume of messages coming from sender@hotmail.com, that email is flagged. |
| 2 | Sender Email | Sending from a no-reply email address no-reply@example.com | |
| 3 | Sender Email | Sending all of your messages from @example.com. | Unique subdomains develop their own reputations. You need customers to see transactional emails if your marketing emails are causing reputation to drop. |
| 4 | Email Recipient | Start sending email to unconfirmed addresses and don’t validate emails before sending a confirmation emails | Hard bounces resulting from typographical errors - one of the worst for email reputation. Must be in the format recipient@example.com |
| 5 | Email Recipient | Rent or Buy email lists. | These people haven’t consented to receive your communications. |
| 6 | Email Recipient | Send a bulk list to people who don’t open your emails, and are not using your website or engaging your social media. | These people aren’t opening your communications, are more likely to flag as spam. Decreasing open rate also damages reputation. |
| 7 | Email Recipient | Continue sending to email addresses which Hard bounce and Soft bounce regularly. | A hard bounce occurs when the email can't be delivered because of a persistent issue, such as when an email address doesn't exist. A soft bounce occurs when a temporary issue prevents the delivery of an email. Soft bounces can occur when a recipient's inbox is full, or when the receiving server is temporarily unavailable. |
| 8 | Email Contents | Try mislead the recipient use fake “Re:” or “Fwd:”. Hide text in CSS/HTML. Use hyperlinks to pages that redirect or don’t exist and make sure to use link shorteners. Use “URGENT UPDATE” and the recipients name in the sender field. | Modern content filters are intelligent, continuously adapting and changing. They don't rely on a predefined set of rules. |
| 9 | Email Contents | ◦ Home mortgage ◦ Credit ◦ Pharmaceuticals and supplements ◦ Alcohol and tobacco ◦ Adult entertainment ◦ Casinos and gambling ◦ Work-from-home programs | Some industries have a reputation for poor quality or even malicious email practices. |
| 10 | Email Contents | Ignore email marketing and anti-spam laws and regulations in the countries and regions that you send email to. | You're responsible for making sure that the email you send complies with the email marketing and anti-spam laws and regulations in the countries and regions that you send email to. |
| 11 | Email Contents | Don’t validate or clean user inputs which are used in the email body like: Name, Nickname, Message etc… | Users can enter their name on signup - if they enter offensive language, or spam like content and you send an email back using their input, it can damage your email reputation. |
| 12 | Email Cadence | Rapidly increase and decrease sending volume on email accounts with no email reputation. | Consistency is important when sending email. When increasing email volume, it's important to steadily increase sending volume each day, with similar types of messages being sent at around the same time every day. |
| 13 | Email Cadence | Keep sending emails when your deliverability rate is falling. | Deliverability rate is the rate of emails that successfully reach the recipients inbox. |
| 14 | Email Cadence | Keep sending emails when your complaint rate is rising. | A complaint occurs when a recipient clicks the "Mark as Spam” button. A complaint rate above 0.1% is BAD. |
| 15 | Email Cadence | Keep sending emails to people who are complaining. | In complaint notifications, the complaining email address is removed, making it hard to find out who complained - but not impossible. |
| 16 | Complaints & unsubscriptions | Do not implement one-click unsubscribe in all commercial, promotional messages | The Google Email sender guidelines don’t apply to messages sent to Google Workspace accounts (@domain.com). Sender requirements and Google enforcement apply only when sending email to personal Gmail accounts (@gmail.com or @googlemail.com). |
| 17 | Complaints & unsubscriptions | Wait over 48 hours to unsubscribe an email address from an email list. | Most people expect immediate removal from email lists and are highly likely to complain if they receive an email after unsubscribing. |
Now just do the opposite:
| # | TO DO LIST |
|---|---|
| 1, 2, 3 | Send from @subdomain.example.com with an address which people can reply to. For example: send transactional emails from orders@transaction.example.com and send marketing emails from orders@transaction.example.com and send employee emails from john.doe@example.com You want your employee emails to be short and easy to spell, reducing the risk of typos. |
| 4 | Get users to confirm their email at the start. Let them know before you send the first email so they don’t put in an incorrect email, so your first email doesn’t bounce. Before sending the first email confirm the domain name exists and is able to receive emails. |
| 5 | Don’t Rent or Buy email lists. |
| 7 | Don’t send email to an email address that has Hard bounced, unless a user explicitly states that they want to use that email address. It could have not existed on day 1, but exist a month later so you can’t block it forever. |
| 7 | Don’t send marketing emails to an address you know is soft bouncing - their inbox maybe full. But continue sending transactional emails, look at other contact methods if the issue persists. |
| 8 | Third-party services can help identify content in your email that might trigger content filters. If your email contains links, check the URLs for those links against denylists, such as those found at URIBL.com and SURBL.org. Avoid using link shorteners and test every link in your email to verify that it points to the intended page. Make sure that your website includes Privacy Policy and Terms of Use documents |
| 8, 9 | Don’t use hyperbolic / spammy language and be more cautious if you are in a high risk industry. |
| 10 | Check your social media geography demographics. Check the endings of the emails to see which countries are on your email list, Check the shipping & billing countries of your sales history. Dust up on your internet marketing laws: Email spam legislation by country. Always consult an attorney to obtain legal advice |
| 11 | Add content filters → but have a manual over ride, some people genuinely have names like ben dover, or Mike oxlong and they would be very annoyed if they couldn’t signup if your content filter was blocking them. Add NSFW filters on most user inputs. |
| Track which users are visiting your website, engaging with your social media and opening emails. Send a re-introduction email to users who haven’t engaged in a long time, if they do not respond - remove. | |
| 12 | Stagger your emails throughout the day so they are sent to your most engaged email recipients first, this will have a higher open rate and reduce risks of going into spam. |
| 13, 14 | Reduce the frequency of emails if your complaint rate rises or your deliverability falls. Look at which emails caused your rates to deteriorate and try to improve the quality of the emails going out. |
| 15 | Send emails with unique identifiers embedded so you can stop sending to people who mark your emails as spam. You also become able to track individual open rates and click through rates. |
| 16, 17 | Add one-click unsubscribe to all marketing emails and remove action immediately. One-click unsubscribe is required only for marketing and promotional messages. Transactional messages are excluded from this requirement |
| WARNING | DON’T SEND COLD OUTBOUND EMAILS - These are likely to have low open rates, higher risk of going straight to the spam folder and a high risk of the user marking as spam. And most importantly they are widely considered illegal in the UK and could land you with a fine from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). This is not legal advice, always consult an attorney to obtain legal advice. |
| BONUS | If you need to get someone to email you back, go to their website and submit a form, this will not negatively effect your email reputation because they will send you the first email. |
| BONUS | Make sure your employees (and anyone that you give email access) has read this list and understands what they SHOULD and SHOULD NOT DO. One rogue employee or contractor has the power to destroy your email reputation. |
| BONUS | Use Social media platforms for cold outbound as this will not negatively effect your email reputation. |
| BONUS | Don’t send weird file types. Definitely don’t send or open executable files over email. |