Let us consider the amount of time and the effort a working professional has put into drafting an email (or emails), only for them to learn that they end up in the spam folder of recipients. Yes, it is an angering experience and what’s the worst part? Recipients never find out if you ever sent them an email.
In all honesty, no one checks their spam, no one. Hardly anyone checks it out of curiosity. Let us now read more on it to see how emails can be stopped from ending up in spam.
Why are my emails going to spam folder?
A large number of emails sent each day are usually scams which are made to deceive unsuspecting people into giving money or key information to cyber criminals.
Let’s take into account that email users find it challenging to manually organize and filter these emails. This is why email service providers like Yahoo and Gmail have automatic spam filters. These filters remove spam, and sends them to the spam folder.
Spam filters work by utilizing various methods to find and detect potential spam content in emails, checking the email sender’s IP address against a blacklist of known spammers, a deceptive subject line as well as email content which is too good to be true, among a host of numerous factors.
There is another problem; at times legitimate and genuine emails often get trapped in the spam folder due to numerous reasons.
Preventing emails from ending up in spam – how to stop emails from going to junk
Let us now have a good look at preventing emails from ending up in spam:
Aversion of spam triggers
Spam filters scan an email’s content by searching for specific triggers to see whether or not the email is of spam nature. Here are the spam triggers companies should avoid when crafting emails:
- Lack of unsubscribe links in emails: A lot of people have revealed that they have received legitimate emails from companies they trust but a lack of unsubscribe button at the bottom frustrates them a lot. Removing an easily findable unsubscription link will result in emails ending up in the spam/junk folder.
- No subject line should have completely capital letters or a lot of exclamation marks: Poorly written email subject lines can trigger anti-spam measures. Words like ‘Sale’ and ‘Free’ as well as phrases like Sale of a lifetime, FLASH SALE, F.re e pr!z3 etc. are used a lot in scamming emails.
- Phishing: Phishing attempts trick people into revealing sensitive information, such as passwords, credit card numbers etc. by acting as legitimate people from a legitimate company. Phishing emails are often caught by spam filters and are thus sent to the spam folder.
- Unwanted attachments: If the email has an attachment, then it should be what the recipient needs or wants. Emails having too many attachments end up in the spam folder because they may have spyware, malware and viruses in them. Hence they become a security concern.
- A lot of imagery: Legitimate marketing campaigns use a lot of images as part of their strategy, but they can trigger anti spam mechanisms. Avoid replacing text with images as spammy words can be put in images as a desperate attempt to bypass anti spam mechanisms.
Always proofread emails at all costs
Emails should be proofread before they are launched. It is important if any business entity or professional wishes to avoid the spam folder. Typing errors and other mistakes can activate spam filters without any question.
Phishing email scams are usually error strewn. Hackers do this to attract email the attention of gullible recipients in order to prevent time wasting. They send emails in truck loads. Poorly written emails can end up easily in the spam folder. This is why editing tools like Grammarly come in quite handy for this task.
Send emails with consent
Getting permission from subscribers is necessary. This helps companies obtain an explicit consent from customers via an opt-in form. This helps them make contacts instead of using an email list which was purchased or harvesting email addresses from the internet.
Obtaining consent from recipients is quite important. Due to numerous hacking inceidnets and controversies regarding the 2016 U.S Pressidential elections, Numerous governmental regulations and legislations have been enacted in this regard. They require companies to have the consent of customers before sending them any commercial electronic messages.
There are numerous ways of obtaining explicit consent, like a checkbox on a signup form or a checkbox with a statement form consenting to receiving updates in the subscription confirmation message.
Obtaining permission from subscribers helps prevent emails going to spam, and is also a legal and ethical requirement.
Asking recipients to whitelist the emails
Asking recipients to whitelist the email address helps companies prevent emails becoming spam. It basically means adding the email address to the contacts list (or the trusted senders list).
This tells the customers’ email client not to send the email messages to the spam folder. When brands and companies ask customers to whitelist their email addresses, they should provide clear cut instructions accordingly.
Using authentication to improve reputation
Authentication is a process which verifies companies as owners of the particular domain name (brand name) or IP address. This is quite useful for people who are using custom email addresses.
It involves sending encrypted messages from the company’s server to recipients’ servers for the sake of validation. Lack of proper authentication in place will force some ISPs to block such incoming mail by a large margin. This means that legitimate email marketing campaigns are not overturned.
Using both DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) helps authentication of emails. The reason these authentication methods are needed is that they aid in email validation and prevent spoofing. It prevents emails from being flagged as spam.
Where is spam folder in gmail?
The spam folder in gmail is located on the left hand menu below the compose email tab. When users click on see more on the left side interface, they will need to click on see more and then they’ll find the spam folder. They have the option of letting Gmail delete spam automatically within 30 days or manually delete them by themselves.
Conclusion
Companies must follow the aforementioned rules and practices of avoiding their emails ending up in the spam and junk folder. User consent is necessary these days before things start on the wrong chapter. This is the reason email marketing these days has to endure scrutiny and ask for consent before it ends up in trouble.
