This is the first in a 3-part series on how to get your emails through the spam filter, so they land in your subscribers’ inboxes. Today’s post is all about how to make your email look spam filter-friendly, so it makes it through and lands where it belongs. This post has been updated to include information about recent changes by Google and Yahoo to improve their protections against spoofing and phishing emails, and how to prevent emails being marked as spam.
Your goal when sending emails is to have those emails show up in your subscribers’ inboxes.
Unfortunately, due to incredible abuses when email was new and continuing abuse by some people, all internet service providers (ISPs) like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. have a spam filter that you need to appease to make sure your email ends up where you want it to be.
The question becomes, how do you make your emails “play nice” with spam filters and are delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes?
What Is a Spam Filter and How Do They Work?
Spam filters are designed to prevent unwanted emails from getting into your inbox. “Unwanted emails” include everything from emails from companies you didn’t sign up for to phishing emails and email virus attacks. As frustrating as they maybe to marketers and business owners, spam filters are necessary.
Your email will encounter different types of spam filters as it tries to reach your subscribers’ inboxes. 3 common ones are:
- Content filters: These examine the headers and body content of your email, looking for anything that would indicate an email is spam. A blacklisted email address or domain name, strange stops an email made on its way to the inbox or trigger words and phrases that usually come from spammers.
- Rule-based filters: Your subscriber can set up rules within your email client that will stop emails with certain headers, subject lines or from certain domains from entering their inbox.
- Bayesian filters: These filters learn your subscribers’ preferences and block emails similar to anything they have marked as junk or spam.
Your mission, as a good and ethical business owner and marketer, is to make your emails as “spam filter-proof” as possible. Because spam filters look for specific indicators, you want your emails to register as non-threatening and appropriate for delivery.
Here are 5 technical best practices you can follow to help your emails land in your subscribers’ inboxes.
1. Use an Email Service Provider (ESP)
Do NOT send emails from your personal email address and your personal email server. This will at the very least get your email account throttled and at worst get it shut down entirely. Seriously, this is a big no-no for many reasons, including the fact that spammers do this by “spoofing” individuals’ email addresses.
Instead, use an email service provider, like Drip, MailChimp or ActiveCampaign. These services are designed to send out bulk emails safely and effectively. It’s also the ideal way to ensure that you’re in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act.
Email service providers automatically include 3 key features when it comes to sending emails.
They Include Your Physical Address in the Footer
This is a legal requirement of the CAN-SPAM act. You must display your physical address in the footer of every email you send. Most ESPs prefer a physical address over a P.O. Box, though P.O. Boxes are allowed. Some won’t accept anything but a physical address.
Check when you’re signing up for your ESP what the requirements are, especially if you don’t want to advertise your home address in your emails.
Check when you’re signing up for your ESP what the requirements are, especially if you don’t want to advertise your home address in your emails.
They Give Your Subscribers a Way to Opt-Out of Future Emails in the Footer
At the bottom of every email you receive from a mailing list, you should see an option to unsubscribe from the list. This is another requirement of the CAN-SPAM act.
Your subscribers may have opted in at one time. Perhaps they’ve decided your content is no longer relevant to them. Or maybe they’ve forgotten who you are and don’t want your emails anymore. You have to give them a way to ask to be removed from your list.
Having this “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of your email in your ESP ensures that they can click on that link and automatically be unsubscribed. This means less work for you and less hassle for them. Everybody wins.
If someone does hit “reply” and requests to be removed from your email list, you do need to remove them manually. You can also respond and let them know they can remove themselves at the bottom of the email, just in case something doesn’t work the way you intended it to.
They Ensure That Your “From” Information is Accurate
Your emails should come from your email address.
Yes, I know I just said not to send emails from your email address at the top of this section.
Here’s the difference:
- Sending your emails from an ESP is safe and legal. Your ESP will ask for the email address you want your emails to come from. You can use whatever you want but having a “business friendly” email address is recommended. For instance, I use tanyabrody (at) tanyabrody.com. You could use hello@yourdomain.com or yourname@yourdomain.com
- Sending emails directly from your personal email address, using your internet service provider’s servers will get your account shut down and is in violation of the CAN-SPAM act. If you’re reported, you may be fined by the Federal Trade Commission.
An ESP will use your chosen “from” information, as listed in your ESP account details. Make sure it is accurate, so you aren’t blocked by the spam filters.
FYI, many ESPs won’t allow you to use a Gmail address for your “From” address. Make sure you have a business email address that will be accepted by your ESP. Your domain host may offer email addresses or you can use services like Zoho or G-Suite. Yes, G-Suite is a Gmail address, but it uses your domain name instead of @gmail.com.
If you want to know more about what to look for in an ESP check out this recent blog post.
2. Only Send Emails to People Who Have Opted into Your List
Seriously.
Don’t ever send emails to people who haven’t given you permission to email them by opting into your list.
Don’t buy email lists from someone else.
Don’t scrape the internet for email addresses.
Don’t put everyone on your contact list into your ESP without their permission.
These tactics are guaranteed to get your emails marked as spam and never delivered. And they’re guaranteed to get your domain name and IP address blacklisted, which means none of your email addresses will get through, even legitimate ones.
If you want to use someone else’s email list, do a “list swap” with them, where they email their own list on your behalf so you can offer their subscribers your lead magnet or something similar. This means you get more legitimate opt-ins on your list. Then you do the same for them with your list.
If you want to add someone who is in your personal contact list to your mailing list, send them a personal email inviting them to sign up and offer them your lead magnet or send them to a sign-up form.
3. Protect Your IP Reputation
“What? What are you talking about? I don’t own Intellectual Property. What on earth do you mean?” I hear you cry.
I know, these acronyms can be a bit confusing.
In this case, IP means “internet protocol address and it is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two main functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing.” As per Wikipedia.
It’s possible that, even if you’ve just started sending emails to a list, someone else could have spoofed your email address and your IP has been blacklisted.
I know. It’s not fair.
First, you can check to see if your IP has been blacklisted at MXToolbox.com Enter your IP address to see whether it’s on a blacklist. FYI, your IP address will be listed at the top of the page, just above the table with the list of DNS blacklists.
Next, you can use an ESP to send your emails. ESPs ferociously protect their IP reputations because they need them to ensure delivery of their customers’ emails. (See, yet another reason to play by the rules.)
FYI, I have had clients who have received warnings from ESPs about their email lists and one who had their account shut down because they weren’t paying attention. ESPs are serious about keeping their IP reputations clean and sparkly.
4. Update Your DMARC, SPF, and DKIM Settings
In October of 2023, Google and Yahoo announced, “By February 2024, any company sending more than 5,000 email messages through Google or Yahoo will have to start using an authentication technology known as Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC).” This is according to an article on Dark Reading.
There are 3 email standards used to prevent spoofing and phishing attempts:
- Sender Policy Framework (SPF): Specifies the servers and domains that are authorized to send email on behalf of your organization.
- DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM): Adds a digital signature to every outgoing message, which lets receiving servers verify the message actually came from your organization.
- Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC): Lets you tell receiving servers what to do with outgoing messages from your organization that don’t pass SPF or DKIM.
To make sure they are in compliance with these new standards, all email service providers (ESPs) and customer relationship management systems (CRMs) sent emails to their customers informing them that they would need to update their DMARC settings by February to prevent any issues with their deliverability.
All of these letters may feel confusing or overwhelming. The links in the bulleted list above will take you to Google articles that will demystify these standards far better than I ever could. Your ESP or CRM should also have documents in their knowledge base that can help you make sure your settings are correct.
If you didn’t make these changes sometime before February 2024, go do it right now. The support team from your ESP or CRM can help.
No really. Go do this. It doesn’t take very long and it’s worth it because it helps prevent your emails from getting caught in the spam filters. And your subscribers can’t read your emails if they never see them.
5. Ask Your New Subscribers to Whitelist Your Email
Address
You should always send a welcome email to new subscribers. And you should tell them you’re sending them an email on the Thank You page of your lead generation funnel. This does a couple of important things for you:
- It teaches your new subscribers to open emails
from you. - It shows your new subscriber’s ISP that you’re
someone they want to hear from.
If you don’t have a welcome email sequence set up, use this set of templates to create your own.
In that welcome email, you should ask your new subscriber to whitelist your email address, so their ISP recognizes it and accepts emails from it.
Some of your subscribers will know how to whitelist your email address, some won’t.
Every ISP has a different method for whitelisting. The easy way for you to deal with this is to copy this list of whitelisting instructions. This article contains whitelisting instructions for the majority of the popular ISPs. (Don’t worry about copying, that’s why this company put the article out there.)
I recommend copying them to a page on your website or a separate, standalone landing page if you don’t have a website yet. Then you can link to this page in your welcome email. You can also add it to your footer if you want to.
You may want to go through the copy and adjust it to your company voice. For example, I changed the voice from “us/our” to “me/my” as I am a solopreneur.
If you’d like to see what the instructions look like, here is my whitelist instructions page.
For most ISPs, a subscriber whitelisting an email address will override any spam filter, so this is something you want to encourage your new subscribers to do.
Know that not everyone will whitelist your email address. Because of this, always follow the best practices listed in this blog post and in the rest of the series. That way your emails have a much better chance of reaching your subscribers’ inboxes.
6.
Check Your Emails to See Whether They Register
as “Spammy”
Worried about whether your emails will get through spam filters?
Check them before you send.
Yes, this is another step. But if you’re genuinely worried, it’s worth your time.
There are several spam testing websites available that will test the content and deliverability of your emails. You will need to send an email to the address listed on the testing site, then they will run a report showing you whether your email is deliverable and likely to make it past the spam filters, or whether you have some work to do first.
I recommend MailTester.com. It has a very simple rating system and interface, with instructions on what you can ignore and what you need to fix.
You can also try ISnotSPAM.com. Their reports are more detailed and may help you figure out why your emails are going into the spam folder if you need to drill down into smaller issues.
If your emails pass the test, you’re good to go!
Make Your Emails Spam Filter Friendly
Now you know what technical changes you need to make to help your emails get through the spam filters on your subscribers’ ISPs.
Download the Spam Filter Checklist now to make sure you’ve confirmed that each of these issues is in order, so your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes.
Next week, I’ll talk about content problems that can set off spam filters and how to fix them.