In previous articles, we discussed how you can easily set up your own email server with iRedMail or Modoboa, or you can set up your email server from scratch. However, many folks can’t get their emails into the inbox of Gmail, hotmail or Yahoo mail, despite having a 10/10 score on mail-tester.com. In this article I’m going to show you all the tips I have that can get your email out of the recipients spam folder.
Note: This article isn’t for spammers. If you send spam, your email will eventually be placed in spam folder, no matter how hard you try.
6 Types of Email Message
First, you need to understand which type of email you are sending. For the purpose of this article, I will divide email messages into 6 categories:
- personal email
- transactional email
- marketing email/newsletter
- group discussion email
- cold email
- spam
Personal emails are usually sent from a person to his/her friends, family members, co-worker snd so on. There is often only one recipient.
Transactional emails are sent from websites or web applications to their users. For example, a visitor receives an email after creating an account at a website, or request resetting the password. There is only one recipient per email.
Marketing email/newsletter are sent by website owners to their subscribers to inform about new blog post, webinar or promote products and services. There are many recipients per email. A subscriber can only reply to the list owner, but can not send email to other subscribers.
Group discussion emails are commonly seen in open-source software development. For instance, the Linux kernel mailing list allows its subscribers to discuss about Linux kernel development. A subscriber can send email to all other subscribers in the mailing list.
Cold email and spam are both unsolicited emails. The difference is that cold emails are often targeted at a specific group of people and the sender usually will provide real service if the recipient responds. Spam are sent to random people and they are often scams.
The Big Four Mailbox Providers
Mailbox providers are also known as inbox service providers. Sometimes people call them ISP (Internet Service Provider). Actually broandband provider and hosting provider can also be called ISP. The most used mailbox providers are:
- Gmail
- Yahoo Mail
- Microsoft Mail (Hotmail, Outlook, Live)
- AOL Mail
3 Email Deliverability Factors
There are mainly 3 factors mailbox providers look into when they decide if your email is spam or not.
- Email standard compliance
- IP address reputation
- Domain name reputation
I will give you tips to getting out of the spam folder, in accordance with these 3 factors.
Tip #1: Set Up Email Authentication and Get 10/10 score
This relates to email standard compliance. You have probably already done this, but for the purpose of being thorough on this subject I still need to talk about it. Spammers often don’t conform to email standards. Setting Up email authentication (correct PTR, SPF, DKIM, DMARC Records) for your email server and getting a 10/10 score on mail-tester.com will increase the chance of your email landing into inbox.
Tip #2: Use SMTP Relay Service
If your mail server has never send emails before, then your IP address doesn’t have reputation (good or bad), and major mailbox providers are more likely to place your email into spam folder. Not being on a blacklist doesn’t mean your IP address carries good reputation, and if a block of IP address has really bad spammers on it, it can affect other people in the neighborhood of that IP block.
SMTP relay services maintain good IP reputation. They stop the bad senders and grow the good ones, so using SMTP relay service will increase the chance of hitting into the inbox.
Tip #3: Set Up A Website and Create Positive Engagement Signals
Domain name reputation is the ultimate factor that influences mailbox providers’ decision. If your domain name has high reputation among mailbox providers, then your emails will land into the recipient’s inbox, even if you don’t strictly comply with email standards or your IP address is in bad reputation.
Note: I’m not suggesting you should ignore tip #1 and tip #2.
Gmail postmaster tools shows my domain name has high domain reputation.
If you have a new domain name, or you have never sent emails from your domain name, then big mailbox providers don’t know about you. Your domain name doesn’t have any reputation (good or bad). So how do you go about improving your domain name reputation?
The are mainly two things that are related to your domain name reputation: website quality and email recipient engagement.
Website Quality
First, your website can affect your domain name reputation. The following will reduce your reputation score.
- There’s no website associated with your domain name.
- Your website has only a blank page.
- Your website is used to spreading virus.
And the following items will increase your reputation score.
- There’s a website associated with your domain name.
- Your website uses HTTPS.
- Your website has unique, good quality content.
If you don’t have a website yet, you can set up a WordPress blog.
Email Recipient Engagement
The other more important thing that can affect your domain reputation is recipients’ engagement with your emails. The more positive engagement, the higher your domain name reputation will be. Positive engagement includes:
- Opening your email.
- Clicking links in your email.
- Replying to your email.
- Adding your email address to contact list (very positive engagement signal)
- Moving your email from spam folder into inbox (very positive engagement signal)
Negative engagement includes:
- Deleting your email without opening it.
- Clicking the unsubscribe link in your email.
- Reporting your email as spam (very negative engagement signal )
But you may ask: If my email can’t get into inbox in the first place, how can I create positive engagement? Well, there are different ways for different email senders. I divide email senders into two groups.
- Those who send transactional emails
- Those who don’t send transactional emails
If You Send Transactional Email
If you send transactional email, it’s very easy to have positive engagement with the recipient, because the recipient expects you to send email to him/her. On your website, you can tell the recipient to check the spam folder and mark your email as not spam. They are much more likely to open your email and click links in the email. Over time, your email will automatically land into inbox.
Note that mailing list sign-up confirmation email is transactional email, so if you have a newsletter sign-up form on your website, you can also tell the recipient to check spam folder and add your email address to contact list. Recipients are very likely to click the confirmation link in the email.
If You Don’t Send Transactional Email
If you run a self-hosted mail server for personal use only, it’s more difficult for you to create the initial positive engagement, but you can:
- Use your original email address to send email to your contact list, tell them that you are going to use a new email address and ask them to add it to their contact lists.
- Create an auto-reply message at your original email address, telling the sender to add your new email address to contact list and send email to the new email address.
- Ask your family members, friends, co-workers for help. Send fictitious email to them and ask them to move your email from spam folder to inbox. You probably need to send several fictitious emails to each person.
If you send cold email, you need to be extra careful about how you approach your recipients. They didn’t ask for your email and if you send email to them again and again, they are very likely to report your email as spam. Don’t be pushy. If the recipient doesn’t respond after 2 or 3 emails, stop emailing them.
Tip #4: Don’t change your mail server’s hostname or the From: domain name.
If you change just one letter in the subdomain, email filters of mailbox providers will treat you differently and you will lose the domain reputation you have built. Subdomains inherit some of the reputation from your apex domain (a domain that doesn’t contain a subdomain) but not all of it. Each subdomain has its own reputation. Note that each email address from the same domain name also has its own individual reputation.
Tips for Newsletter/Marketing Email Senders
Besides the above general tips, here are some specific tips for newsletter/marketing email senders.
- Make sure the recipient gave you permission to send email. Use double opt-in to verify subscriber’s email address. If you don’t, there’s a high chance that you will have email delivery issue.
- If you change your mail server IP address, or you use a new subdomain, you need to warm up your IP address/subdomain. For example, send 100 emails on day 1, then send 500 emails on day 2, send 1000 emails on day 3. Don’t send email to thousands of people immediately.
- Send emails that recipients actually want.
- Include your contact information and your mailing address at the bottom of the email message.
- Personalize the email message as much as possible. For example, include the recipient’s first name in the email body and segment your list based on subscriber’s gender, age, interest, country, etc.
- Conform to CAN-SPAM Act
- Avoid large attachments.
- Clean your email list. For example, delete email subscribers that haven’t opened your email in the last 60 days. This is usually called email sunset policy. Unengaged subscribers won’t make you money and they are detrimental to your domain reputation.
- Test your email placement with GlockApps before you send.
- Be consistent in your sending frequency. If you send emails to your subscribers in the first month, but stops sending emails in the following 6 months, then your subscribers don’t remember you and mailbox providers are likely to put your email into spam folder.
- Keep your open rate above 20% and spam rate below 0.8%. You can check spam rate at Gmail Postmaster Tools.
- If you send newsletters/marketing emails, then your emails are likely to land in the promotions tab in Gmail. One way to get into the primary tab is by using only plain-text in your email.
- Don’t strip the List-Unsubscribe header from your email. The List-Unsubscribe header is required if you send newsletters. It enables the user to easily unsubscribe from your mailing list. When a person wants to unsubscribe, you should not prevent him/her to do so.
- Sometimes mailbox providers would temporarily stop accepting your newsletter email. Don’t panic. They just want to find out if you are sending spam, by looking at users’ behavior with your already sent emails. If they decide that your are not a spammer, the rest of your email will be accepted. This delay can be up to 24 hours.
- Your emails won’t be placed in all recipients’ inboxes. Some of them will probably be placed at spam folder. It depends on how the specific recipient interacts with your previous emails. So it’s important that you maintain good relationship with every subscriber in the email list.
- Be careful with email curse words like weight loss, make money, etc. Generally you should not use them in your email unless you have established a good domain reputation and has good engagement with your recipients before.
- Don’t overuse capital letters, bold letters and highlighting in your email. These are common techniques used by spammers to attract recipient’s attention.
Wrapping Up
I hope these tips can help you get out of spam folder. As always, if you found this post useful, then subscribe to our free newsletter to get more tips and tricks. Take care 🙂
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