Emails Sent to Spam

Authentication methods

The following authentication methods can be used to minimize the chances of your emails being flagged as spam:

• Publish an SPF record for your domain

• Turn on DKIM signing for your messages

• Publish a DMARC record for your domain

For further information on the authentication methods above, refer to this article from Google.

Domain

Acquire a secondary domain specifically for email campaigns (e.g., a domain separate from the domain that you use for your day-to-day business operations). Using a secondary domain means that your primary domain is not going to be flagged as spam or even blacklisted, which could otherwise have significant consequences for your day-to-day business operations.

Google Workspace

Make sure your Google profile is complete as much as possible to maximize the chances of Google identifying you as a real person acting on behalf of a real business rather than as a spammer. This means completing all the fields on your Google profile with genuine information, and adding a good profile picture that is relevant and not generic.

Email signature

Create an email signature that is included at the foot of all of your emails. Your email signature should include your name, job title, email address, and phone number, as well as your company's name, mailing address, and website. The key to engagement with your recipients is ensuring that your email looks professional and reputable. Your recipients are much more likely to open, read, and respond to your email if it is clear that the email originates from a legitimate business.

Newsletters

Sign up to newsletters because this helps to make sure that your email address is viewed as genuine by Google and that it is regularly used. It is important that you remember to confirm your email address when prompted by each of the newsletter providers, so that the newsletters arrive in your inbox.

Organic emails

Send emails to friends and family and ask them to reply. Again, this helps to make sure that your email address is viewed as genuine by Google and that it is regularly used. It can also demonstrate that your email address is used to send and receive organic emails and not just automated or bulk emails. As the interaction with your email address increases, you can slowly start to increase the number of emails that you send.

Quality content

Quality content is essential not only to avoid emails being marked as spam, but also to improve engagement with your recipients. Quality content means well-written emails that are free from typos and spam words or phrases, are not saturated with images and links, are not lengthy or generic, but concise and meaningful. You should avoid sending email attachments, especially with your early emails (file link attachments can be used instead). Your email subject should be simple and relevant.

Relevant

Ensure that your emails are relevant to your recipients. A guaranteed way for your emails to be flagged as spam is to send them to the wrong recipients (e.g., recipients for whom the content is not relevant). Therefore, it is essential to have the right leads and to take the time to do your research. If you are marketing to another business, make sure you send the email to the correct department or the right person responsible for making decisions regarding your product or service.

Targeted

Make sure your mailing list is kept up-to-date. Another sure way for your emails to be marked as spam is for a high proportion of them to bounce (e.g., email address no longer exists and your email cannot reach its intended recipient). Again, good leads are essential in this case. If your emails do bounce, remove those recipients from your mailing list. As a rough guide, try to aim for a bounce rate of less than 10% to avoid triggering the algorithm of Google.

Scheduling

Schedule your emails. Email scheduling is a great way to avoid emails being flagged as spam as it enables you to spread your emails out in small batches so that they are not all sent at once in one big batch. Further information on scheduling emails can be found in this article.

Start small

Start with a small list of recipients and expand the list gradually. While it may be tempting to get your email campaign into full swing as soon as possible, doing so risks your emails getting marked as spam or even blocked from the outset. Your email account is not yet ready to handle the volume of emails associated with bulk email campaigns. Therefore, it is best to keep your mailing list small to start with and to personalize your emails using *|merge fields|*.

This approach can result in higher engagement, good visibility, and good relationships with your (initially) small group of recipients. It can also establish your business as legitimate to Google and set a precedent for your email traffic in the future.

NOTE: Some emails are inevitably marked as spam when you send bulk emails. The steps above describe how to minimize the chances of emails being marked as spam and not how to avoid emails being marked as spam altogether.