As an email marketer, sending emails that end up in the spam or Gmail’s Promotion tab can be extremely frustrating. Luckily, I experimented with some practices that helped boost the open rates and CTR for my emails. In this post, I’ll help you learn how to prevent emails from going to spam or the Promotion tab.
You take tons of time attracting the relevant readers to your list and writing awesome emails. And you expect to get up to 122% return on your email marketing efforts, which is the median ROI. That’s not much to ask for, right?
But you’ll never achieve anything close to this ROI if your emails aren’t opened in the first place. Even if your audience is interested in your content, they usually don’t open the Promotion tab or spam folder. Let’s first understand why it happens.
Why Emails Go to Spam or Promotion Tab
Understanding the reasons behind emails ending up in the Trash folder or Promotion tab is important. Google uses an algorithm to scan the emails if we talk specifically about Gmail’s Promotion and other such tabs. No, it doesn’t read them.
Gmail’s algorithm understands them based on a few filters. And that’s why 84.5% of the emails labeled as promotion don’t get read, and only 19 of the Promotion tab emails are read, which is extremely low.
So it becomes vital for you to land your emails in the primary inbox rather than any other tab. Let’s get to know how you can prevent emails from going to spam or the Promotion tab right now.
Why Avoid Your Emails from Going to Spam or Promotional Tab
There are tons of benefits of your emails getting delivered to your audience’s primary inbox, and you get higher open rates, increased conversion, and reliability.
High Open Rates & CTR
Emails that arrive in the primary inbox get opened. On the other hand, no one or very few people open emails if they arrive in their promotional tab. If you implement the best practices given in this post, you’ll get high open rates & CTR.
Boosted Email Marketing ROI
When you have high open rates of your emails, you get a boosted return on your investment. Again, this happens if you deliver your emails in your audience’s inbox and not the promotion tab.
Conversion increases if the open rates and CTR increases. And this happens if you prevent email from going to spam.
Increased Trust & Reputation
If you send an email and it arrives in your audience’s primary inbox, you’ll enjoy increased trust. The reputation of your IP and ‘from’ email address will boom! And this factor helps you send even more emails to your subscribers. See, everything is connected! Isn’t it awesome?
Now that you know the advantages of landing your emails in the inbox and not in the promotion tab let’s jump on learning how to avoid email from going to spam.
How to Prevent Email from Going to Spam or Promotion Tab (2022)
First things first. Don’t spam! And don’t do any bad practice to hone the power of email marketing. It means you must avoid email blasts without running proper campaigns.
Make sure your audience opts in your email list, so they’re interested in your emails. And then take these steps to avoid emails from going to spam or outbox.
Ask the Email Recipients to Whitelist Your Email Address
That’s the number one thing you want to do to land your emails in your audience’s primary inbox. It’s best if you do it in your welcome email. And you don’t need to think much about the idea; ask them to safelist your email address.
They’ll not hesitate to add your email address to their contact list if they are interested in getting your emails. You may write something like,
“Hassan here! I want to take an opportunity to thank you for subscribing to H-Educate’s weekly newsletter about digital marketing. You’ll get tutorials and guides, and free tools to get started in the world of online business.
One little request: Make sure to add [email protected] to your email list so that you get actionable marketing advice to grow your business online”
That’s just it! Or you may write something different to say the same thing. Whitelisting is the simplest method to help you land the emails in your audience’s inbox. And requesting your audience is not that daunting, I promise.
Avoid Adding Too Many Links to Your Email
Go for conversational emails rather than marketing ones. People want to buy a solution, not a product. And you can sell solutions only if you talk to them.
So, don’t bombard them with tons of links in your email, and your readers may not love it if you add too many links. And you’ll not be able to prevent email from going to spam or promotional tab in Gmail.
And algorithms like Gmail also consider your emails as spam or promotional if they contain too many links. How many links are too many? Well, it depends on what you’re talking about. But make sure you start emailing your recipients with zero links.
Follow the Email Marketing Laws
Yes, there are laws governing email marketing! And you must follow them. For example, CAN-SPAM Act outlines the best practices you must follow to send commercial emails. These practices may include:
- Not sending emails with the recipient’s permission
- Not using a particular email address for sending emails
- And sending emails with misleading subject lines
- Sending emails without including a method to opt-out
If you use an email marketing service like Elastic Email, Convertkit or SendinBlue, you don’t need to worry about the laws. They’re already on to them. Take these laws seriously if you’re managing your email marketing system yourself.
Boost Your Reputation
Internet Service Providers judge your spamming score by your IP’s reputation if you’re sending emails in-house. It also checks the reputation of ‘from’ email addresses. For that, you need to increase the number of emails sent gradually.
Email Warmup Schedule Generator helps you set a schedule for sending emails depending on the number of emails. If you follow the schedule, you can easily prevent email from going to spam or promo tab.
But if you’re using a third-party email service provider, ensure to use the reputable email marketing program. That may be Convertkit, GetResponse, or SendinBlue.
If you send bulk emails using Gmail, use Postmaster Tools to see your spam score, reputation, and email performance. It lets you know the delivery errors, feedback loop, and more. By analyzing your performance, you can easily take control of your reputation.
Don’t Write Misleading and Spammy Subject Lines.
Subject lines of your emails determine whether your audience will click on them or not. How many times have you clicked or ignored an email just by looking at the subject line? Most of the time, I’m sure! And what if you have been misled?
Of course, you’ll never open the email again.
- Don’t write subject lines that sound like spam.
- Use email copywriting skills to create them.
- Include numbers, subscriber’s name.
- Add something attractive in your email headlines.
And you can also use Subject Line Tester to see if your email’s likely to be opened! Try to get an over 80 score on this tool.
But don’t talk about things you’ll not deliver in your email’s body. Be careful of some trigger headlines like, “Get $5000 Right Now”. Or else, you’ll not be able to prevent email from going to spam or promotion tab in Gmail.
Send Emails Regularly
Don’t send unnecessary emails daily. But don’t just forget to send emails regularly. After several months, if you send an email, your subscribers will forget they’ve opted in to get your emails. Stay in contact with your audience and add value to their lives continuously.
Let Your Subscribers Unsubscribe Your Emails Easily
Yes, that may be against all your email marketing goals. But you need to be ethical, open, and comply with the CAN-SPAM Act when doing the business. Include an easy way to opt-out of your email list.
And I believe it’s better for achieving your marketing goals. Why? It’s because you automatically purge uninterested email addresses this way. So save your time and investment for making space for the email addresses that want your content.
Summarizing: How to Prevent Email from Going to Spam Folder or Promotion Tab
Millions of emails are sent every day, so it’s your job to make sure they land in your audience’s primary inbox. Doing this will substantially increase open rates, CTR, and ROI of your efforts.
Let me summarize the entire process of preventing emails from going to spam:
- Build your email list through a campaign, and don’t blast emails
- Ask the email recipients to add your address to their contact list
- Don’t add too many links to your emails
- Follow the laws for email marketing like CAN-SPAM Act
- Increase the reputation of your IP and sending an email address
- Deliver what you promise in subject lines and don’t mislead your audience
- Send email regularly and consistently
- Allow the recipients to opt-out of your email list
That’s all! Email marketing isn’t complex; all you need is to be ethical and professional in sending emails. Analyze the need to solve a problem for your readers. And add value to your audience. Wish you good luck!
Featured photo by Damian Zaleski on Unsplash