Why do my emails end up in the spam folder?

In order to understand why your emails often end up in the spam folder, we will examine the reasons and tips that can cause your emails to be marked as spam. By understanding these reasons, you can make your emails more likely to reach the inbox, thereby ensuring more effective communication with your recipients.

What is the spam folder?

It is a folder in your inbox where emails deemed unsolicited or potentially harmful are automatically filtered. Anti-spam filters from email providers sort emails based on various criteria to protect users from junk mail.

There are several reasons why your emails may end up in spam. Here are some of the most common reasons:

1. Suspicious message content: If the content of your email resembles spam, contains suspicious keywords, or seems overly promotional, it is likely to be filtered as spam.
2. Unknown or unauthenticated sender: If you are sending emails to people who have not added you to their contacts or if your email address is not authenticated with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, this can lead to spam classification.

Note that since February 2024, major email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft have tightened their conditions. Emails from senders using unauthenticated domains are systematically automatically sent to the spam folder.

3. Email volume: Mass sending of emails from an IP address can trigger anti-spam filters, especially if this activity is sudden or unusual.
4. Complaint rate: If recipients report your emails as spam, this can result in their future classification as such.

If ISPs record complaints of your emails as being spam by your recipients, they will stop sending them to their inboxes.

To track your email performance and reputation, such as Gmail delivery errors, spam reports, and more, you need to create a GPT account (Google Postmaster Tools). For more information about this, see the article:  How to create a Google Postmaster Tool account for your domain.

5. Purchased or untargeted email lists: Sending emails to purchased or untargeted lists can trigger anti-spam filters, as this is often associated with spam practices. (These lists are prohibited on  systeme.io)
6. The impact of landing in the spam folder: When your emails are filtered into the spam folder, it reduces their visibility to your recipients. Users tend to check their spam folder less frequently or not check it at all. Therefore, even if you send legitimate emails, they may not be seen by your recipients, which can lead to lost business or communication opportunities.

To improve your emails' deliverability and avoid having your emails end up in spam, you can follow these tips:

Use a healthy email address: If your email address has been used to send spam in the past, it can harm its reputation. Email service providers take the sender's reputation into account when filtering emails. Therefore, it is essential to maintain a clean sender reputation by avoiding unauthorized mass sending practices and following best email marketing practices.

If your email address has been used to send spam in the past or has had deliverability issues, this can harm its reputation.

Use healthy content: Anti-spam filters also analyze the content of emails to detect signs of spam. Emails containing typical spam keywords, links to malicious sites, or suspicious attachments are more likely to be marked as spam. Therefore, ensure that the content of your emails is relevant, well-written, and does not include practices likely to be associated with spam.

Note: We advise against using link shorteners like bit.ly

Please pay close attention to your statistics and closely monitor the emails that are most important, particularly those that are most viewed by your contacts. If a link is included, the click-through rate can also be a significant indicator. Generally, an email open rate below 10% is cause for concern, as well as a click-through rate below 1%.

It is important to send content that your recipients show interest in. An interesting way to reduce the number of these complaints is to ensure that you have the best sign-up process on your pages and to enable double opt-in.

It is also crucial to monitor the times during which your contacts are most responsive to your emails.

Maintain a reasonable email sending flow: Sending too many emails to your contacts may be interpreted by anti-spam filters as spam-like activity. Likewise, a sudden increase or doubling of the volume of emails sent may be viewed negatively. Maintaining a steady flow of emails is essential. For a launch, it is recommended to segment your contacts and send emails gradually before the scheduled launch date.

Conduct tests: You can use the option "Send a test email" on all the emails you create. While it is not possible to predict your inbox placement, this step will help you know if major issues are detected in your email that could affect its deliverability.

Make unsubscribing easy: By making this process easy, you will avoid numerous reports.

Getting an unsubscribe is not necessarily a bad thing: this action simply indicates that someone no longer wants your mail. You should make it easy for your contacts to unsubscribe so that they are not encouraged to mark it as spam. Ensure that your unsubscribe link is easy to spot.

In summary, to avoid having your emails classified as spam, make sure to use an email address with a good reputation, send relevant and quality content, avoid questionable practices, and follow good email marketing practices.