Are your email campaigns getting low open rates? Your subscribers may never even get the chance to open them, because your emails are piling up in spam folders.
Why emails go to spam instead of the inbox
The average inbox placement rate is around 83%. This means that roughly 1 in 6 emails goes straight to spam or never reaches your subscribers at all. Finding out why emails land in spam is therefore essential for every marketer.
If your emails land in spam, your customers never see what you want to tell them, and you lose revenue you could have earned if your emails had reached their inboxes.
Spam filtering has become stricter over the last few years, and emails are going to spam more and more often. Email providers such as Google and Yahoo are cracking down on spam to serve their customers better. The problem is that filtering is not 100% accurate, so even legitimate emails end up in spam.
Reasons why emails go to spam
Email deliverability depends not only on your own behaviour and settings but, to a large extent, on the behaviour and engagement of your subscribers. So what are the reasons why my emails go to spam?
1. Your engagement is low
The leading webmail providers say that, when deciding how to filter spam, they look at how many emails are opened and how many are deleted. If your open or read rates are low, your emails are at greater risk of being marked as spam.
How to fix it: As well as targeting the right audience from the start, you can send your emails at the right time, improve your subject lines, segment your list and keep your email list up to date by cleaning it regularly.
2. Your mailbox usage is low
In their spam filtering algorithms, email providers track the ratio of active to inactive email accounts on your list. An inactive email account is one that has not been used for a long time or is used only rarely.
If you send a campaign to a large number of inactive email addresses, this is a warning sign for spam filters. Some unused addresses also turn into spam traps over time. If a user stops using an address, it will eventually stop working under the provider’s rules. However, Google (or another provider) may not delete the address and may start using it to detect spam. It then treats any email sent to that address as spam.
How to fix it: To prevent this, regularly remove from your email list any subscribers who have not interacted with your campaigns for some time.
You can do this by sending re-engagement campaigns. For example, you can offer subscribers a discount or find another way to persuade them to respond. This gives your audience one last chance to engage with your company before you remove them from your email list.
4. Your subject line is misleading
Under the CAN-SPAM Act, it is illegal to deliberately mislead people with your subject line to get them to open your message.
Here are some examples of misleading subject lines:
Did I leave my jacket at your place? This kind of subject line can be used as a trick to make it look as though the subscriber knows you.
RE: CURRENTLY IN OFFICE is doubly deceptive, because it can be mistaken for a reply to your email or a work-related message.
Urgent: update your details. If something says “urgent”, it really should be urgent.
Thanks for your order! Using a transactional subject line when the email is not actually transactional is very bad practice.
If your subject lines are misleading, you risk your emails being flagged as spam, or being marked as spam by recipients who feel disappointed and deceived. It is not worth the risk.
Trying to come up with a subject line that gets a high open rate is perfectly legitimate, but it must always reflect the actual content of the email. So my emails may be going to spam because they are misleading.
5. Your emails look like spam
Some words and punctuation look like spam. On their own, individual words may not be enough to trigger a spam filter. However, they attract attention, and combined with other issues on your list, they can result in your emails being marked as spam.
Avoid these spammy tactics:
ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
Lots of exclamation marks!!!!!!
A flood of emojis ❤✨🔥👍🥺 (you can use a few, just do not overdo it.)
Subject lines such as “Meet local singles” or “online business opportunity”
Images, especially ones that replace text, can also get you into trouble with spam filters.
If your email contains a large image and little or no text, it may trigger spam filters. To get around filters that catch suspicious text, some spammers have moved all of their text into an image. For this reason, an email consisting of a single image looks suspicious to spam filters.
6. Subscribers are marking you as spam
Every time a subscriber reports an email as spam, the mailbox provider logs a complaint. Once complaints exceed a certain threshold, all future campaigns skip the inbox and go straight to the spam folder.
This is much worse than users “just” not opening your emails. If your email list contains the wrong audience, people who are not interested in your content, who are annoyed by how often you send, or who do not remember who you are or why you are emailing them at all, your campaigns may be severely penalised.
Of course, every marketer wants the largest possible database and the longest possible email list. But quality matters more than quantity. Above all, you want your database to contain people who open your emails and ideally interact with their content. Have you ever thought about buying an email database? Forget that idea straight away.
How to fix it: Every email must include a simple way to unsubscribe. Users who are not interested can easily unsubscribe instead of marking your emails as spam and damaging your reputation.
7. Your IP address is or has been used for spam
One of the things providers assess is the reputation of the IP address you send emails from. Even if you never send spam yourself, your emails may be flagged if your IP address was used for spam in the past.
If you send your campaigns through an email marketing service, your emails are delivered through its servers and IP addresses. So if even one other customer of that service sends spam, it can affect your deliverability too.
Remember, however, that every email marketing service protects its reputation. They have strict procedures and rules in place to prevent this type of problem. As a general rule, you should be fine if you stick with a reputable email service provider.
💡 Tip: You can check your IP address reputation with Google’s tool https://postmaster.google.com/
7. Your domain reputation is low
Email providers increasingly track not only senders’ originating IP addresses but also the sending domain and even the individual sender alias.
If emails from @yourcompany.cz are usually deleted without being opened or, worse, marked as spam, your domain reputation suffers and all future emails are more likely to end up in spam.
On the other hand, if emails from your company are clicked, opened, added to allow lists, forwarded, replied to and so on, your domain reputation will improve.
💡 Tip: You can also check your domain reputation with Google’s tool https://postmaster.google.com/
8. You have not set up email authentication
Authentication protocols are one of many ways spam filters verify email senders and keep hackers and spammers out of your inbox. The three authentication protocols you should know about are DKIM, SPF and DMARC.
Emails that fail authentication are more likely to be classified as risky or as spam. Make sure your marketing emails are properly authenticated.
Authentication allows a service to send emails on your behalf, so they appear under your domain name even when sent by a third party. If your authentication is not set up correctly, your emails may end up straight in your recipients’ spam folders.
Read also about image optimisation for WordPress or how to write a good blog article.
How to stop emails from going to spam, step by step
The reasons above suggest an order of work. To prevent emails from going to spam, start with the technical basics, then move on to your list and your content.
- Authenticate your domain. Publish SPF, DKIM and DMARC records for the domain you send from, and make sure every service that sends email for you is included in them.
- Send from your own domain. Use an address on your company domain rather than a free webmail address. This builds your reputation on a domain you control.
- Warm up new domains and addresses. Start with small volumes sent to your most engaged subscribers and increase them gradually over several weeks. A sudden large send from a new sender looks suspicious.
- Collect consent properly. Use a clear sign-up form and consider double opt-in, where people confirm their address by clicking a link. This keeps typos and spam traps out of your list.
- Keep your sending consistent. A steady rhythm is easier for filters to trust than long silences followed by large bursts.
- Test before you send. Send a test to your own accounts at several providers and check where it lands.
How SPF, DKIM and DMARC work together
SPF is a DNS record that lists the servers allowed to send email for your domain. DKIM adds a digital signature to each message. The receiving server checks it against a public key in your DNS, which proves the message was not changed on the way. DMARC builds on both. It tells receiving servers what to do with messages that fail the checks (deliver them, quarantine them or reject them) and sends you reports about who is sending email in your name.
A common approach is to start DMARC with a monitoring policy, read the reports for a few weeks to confirm that all your legitimate services pass, and only then move to a stricter policy.
What to do if your email is going to spam
First, confirm the problem. Ask a few colleagues or customers to check their spam folders, and send tests to accounts you own at different providers. Then open the full headers of a delivered message. They show whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC passed.
Next, look at what has changed recently. A new sending tool, a newly imported list, a change of domain or a sharp rise in volume are typical triggers.
The same logic applies to ordinary one-to-one emails. If your messages to a particular contact keep landing in spam, ask them to mark one as not spam and add you to their contacts. Avoid sending many identical messages with links or attachments from a personal mailbox, because this looks like bulk mail.
Common mistakes
- Sending from a no-reply address, which discourages the replies that show a real relationship.
- Using link shorteners, which spammers often use to hide where a link leads.
- Sending HTML emails without a plain text version.
- Importing an old list that has not been emailed for a long time.
- Changing several things at once, which makes it hard to see what actually helped.
Frequently asked questions about emails going to spam
How do I stop my emails from going to spam?
Start by authenticating your domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Then email only people who agreed to hear from you, remove inactive addresses regularly and write subject lines that match the content. Over time, good engagement improves your sender reputation.
Why is my email going to spam all of a sudden?
A sudden change usually has a recent cause. Check whether you started using a new sending tool, imported a new list, changed your domain or sent a much larger volume than usual. Also check your message headers to make sure authentication still passes.
How can recipients keep emails from going to spam?
A recipient can move your message to the inbox, mark it as not spam and add your address to their contacts. Many email programs also let them create a filter that always delivers messages from your address to the inbox. You can include a short note asking new subscribers to do this.
Can I make sure my emails never go to spam?
No sender can guarantee inbox placement, because each provider uses its own filters and also considers each recipient’s behaviour. What you can do is reduce the risk by following good practice consistently. Monitor your results and react quickly when placement drops.
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