You’ve spent a long time carefully typing out your email, only to find that the recipient never received it. It’s gone straight to their spam folder. Here’s how you can reduce the risk of your emails being wrongly marked as spam:
There are many reasons why your emails are being wrongly marked as spam by your recipient, from spam triggering words in the email content, to being blacklisted on the recipient’s server. Spam filters are designed to recognise spam characteristics of emails and determine the likelihood that the email is a spam email. If the email’s spam score is higher than the recipient’s threshold, it will be kept in a separate folder to their inbox.
Some factors that determine whether an email is marked as spam or not cannot be controlled by the sender. For example, the email address or domain being blacklisted on the recipient’s server will cause all emails from this address to be marked as spam. If you inform the recipient that your emails are not reaching their inbox, their IT administrator may be able to whitelist your email address to allow your emails through their spam filter but this is not always possible.
To reduce the risk of your email being wrongly marked as spam, or your address being blacklisted, you can try to reduce its spam filter score. We’ve written a list of some of the most common reasons why emails have a high spam filter score and are marked as spam.
Your Content Contains Spam Triggers
The spam filter will look for words and phrases in your email that will increase the email’s spam filter score. Filters will look for characteristics that are commonly found in spam or malicious emails including phrases in capital letters, lots of exclamation marks, too many emojis, or triggering words such as ‘win’, ‘free’ or ‘casino’. This does not mean that your emails must never contain these characteristics - infrequent use is usually acceptable. However, email addresses that continuously use many of these characteristics are likely to be blacklisted or have their emails marked as spam.
You're Sending Too Many Emails
Sending out hundreds of emails a day can be a trigger for some spam filters. This can flag up as 'bot-like' behaviour, particularly if the email is the same and being sent to a number of recipients. Sending out a large number of emails that may not be relevant to the recipients will also result in low-engagement. This means that the recipients do not open, read, or interact with your email. The recipient may delete or move the email to their junk folder. As a sender with low engagement-rates, your emails are more likely to be marked as spam. This is a common problem for businesses in the sales industry. If you want to send out a large number of marketing emails, you should use third-party platforms such as MailChimp.
Your Signature Contains Images and Links That Are Not Secure
Signatures are one of the most common causes of our customers’ emails being marked as spam. Signatures are added to the end of every email and contribute towards the email’s spam score. The content of the signature such as links or hosted images can increase the risk of your email being marked as spam– especially if they’re not secure. Links that are not secure will indicate that your email is linked to an unsafe website, triggering spam filters. To ensure that your email signatures are the same across the whole business, it is a good idea to use a hosted email signature service. This means that your signature and its images are hosted securely and cannot be edited by individuals. An easy test can be used to find out if your email signature is causing your email to marked as spam: simply try sending an email to the same recipient without a signature.
Your Recipients Are Moving Your Emails to Their Spam Folder
If the recipient has moved an email you sent to their spam (junk) folder before, intentionally or not, further emails you send are also more likely to go straight to their spam folder. If the user has access to this folder, they can move legitimate emails to their inbox. If you suspect your emails are going straight to the spam folder, it is a good idea to call the recipient to see if they can find it and move it to their inbox to reduce the risk of this happening in the future.
By using the information above to try to lower your email’s spam filter score, you will reduce the risk of your emails being marked as spam. If you are still having issues with your emails, you can contact our IT technicians to investigate further.
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About Carrera UK
Carrera UK provide IT support, IT services, and telecoms to small businesses in Portsmouth & Southampton in Hampshire, and across the South of England.
We offer a complete suite of IT and telecoms service solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, including IT support, website design, social media management and cyber security.
We know how important IT is to your business and we will work hard as your trusted IT and telecom service provider to find the best solutions for you. Our IT support and solutions give you the assurance that your business technology will be robust, reliable, and cost-effective.
