All emails go to spam. What to do if the necessary emails end up in spam? SPF not set

Most courses on making money online are related to selling affiliate programs. For the seller, this is just a link that you need to “stick” anywhere and expect that they will click on it and buy the course offered by the partner. Eat different ways distribution of such links: in in social networks, on forums and third-party sites, on your blog, through paid advertising, and also through email newsletters. For example, Sergey Kamardin offers such work with affiliates. You can. We will focus on the last one - email marketing and tell you how to send mailings so that the letters do not end up in spam.

How simple everything seems at first glance: compose a letter, insert an affiliate link, set up automatic mailing and wait for the money to flow into your wallet. Well, it's not that simple! You're expecting sales, but suddenly you discover that none of your emails have reached their target. The letters ended up in spam, and your account was banned for intrusive mailing.

We don't know exactly how anti-spam filters work, but there are some obvious tricks that will help prevent emails from ending up in spam.

What should I do to prevent emails from going to spam?

We've put together a list of things you need to do to ensure your emails reach your target audience.

1. Connect monitoring services for your mailings in all popular mail services: postoffice.yandex.ru, postmaster.mail.ru, postmaster.google.com, postmaster.aol.com, help.yahoo.com/kb/postmaster. They help track the movement of your emails throughout the day and their deliverability. If a problem arises, you will be able to find out about it in time, see which letters ended up in spam, what was in them, when and to whom they were sent.

2. Your letters must contain: DKIM record(confirms that the letter came from exactly the sender written in the address), DMARC record(checks authentication and sends reports), SPF entry(protects your domain from counterfeiting). Thanks to them, both the recipient and the robot will be sure that your account has not been hacked or forged, and that it was you who sent this letter. This builds trust and increases not only the percentage of inboxes, but also the open rate of emails.

3. Every letter should contain information why the person received this letter: because he subscribed to your blog, for example. Usually this is a not very noticeable note at the bottom, in the footer, in the format: “You received this letter because you subscribed to our mailing list - and a link to the site.”

4.Unsubscribe link must be mandatory, and it must be clearly visible and not hidden by anything. If it is not there or the person cannot find it immediately, then he will click on the “Spam” button. This will greatly damage your reputation, and if there are a lot of such complaints, then all your letters will end up in spam. It’s better to write below that “you can always unsubscribe using such and such a link, but then you will miss a lot of interesting things.” If a person does not want to receive newsletters from you, it means that he is not your target audience and there is nothing to keep him.

How the spam filter works

5. It would be a good idea to add it to every letter. information about the subscriber himself: date of subscription, IP address from which this subscription was made. To prove to the person that he really signed up, even if he completely forgot about you. This can be easily done on the mailing services you use.

6. Check that your IP and IP service are not in the spam database. You can do this here: 2ip.ru/spam/

8. In letters there should be no “spam words”. To prevent your emails from being classified as spam, these words cannot be used either in the body or in the subject line of the email. These are the most popular words in sales, such as: sale, earnings, free, buy, 100%, etc. To find out if your letter contains such “safe words”, you can check the letter for free service, for example, emailcheck.ru or spamtester.bazaaremail.com

Most popular spam words

9. Don't use capsluk in your email. to highlight entire words, and also do not overdo it oily discharge. Capital letters should be capitalized and lowercase should remain lowercase.

10. Do not replace Russian letters with Latin ones. Many people try to bypass spam filters by replacing letters in spam words. But they say that this no longer works and robots can recognize such words even with replaced letters.

11. Collect a subscriber base using double confirmation of subscription. Those. a person subscribes to the newsletter, he receives a letter, in it he clicks on confirmation, and only then his address is added to your mailing list. This allows you to avoid incorrectly entering addresses into the subscription form, which in the future can lead to clicking on the “spam” button. In addition, this is an additional check for you whether the entered address is live and whether the subscriber intends to open your letters at all.

12. The best thing is when the letters arrive active subscribers. Your newsletter should be opened, read and clicked by recipients. This way the email bot will see that you are sending out what people want to receive. This improves your reputation.

13. Process FBL responses. Those. you should unsubscribe from your mailing list people who clicked the “spam” button. They should no longer receive letters from you.

14.Do not send letters to non-existent and dead mailboxes. These are boxes full of letters, abandoned, whose owners have not opened any letters for a long time and in which there is no longer room for new letters. You can find out about this thanks to response letters from postal services (bounce back). It is important to process and unsubscribe such addresses from your mailing list. This will reduce the likelihood that your emails end up in spam.

Even offline emails end up in spam

15. The email address from which you send letters must exist as real mailbox. You can send a reply letter to it. Postal services really don’t like all sorts of things: no-replay@, noreplay@…

16. If you notice problems with the deliverability of your emails, you need to deal with this in a timely manner. Your emails end up in spam, do not reach the recipient, or are on the Black List - contact us immediately postal service and find out the reason. With proper dialogue and an explanation of where your subscriber base came from, your reputation can usually be restored. It's just that sometimes the mail service needs to make sure that you haven't been hacked and are not sending spam on your behalf.

17. Don't keep your letters very short. "Hello! Here is the link...” - it goes straight to spam. The letter must contain at least 500-600 characters.

Unfortunately, even following these rules does not provide a 100% guarantee that your emails will not end up in spam. Mail robots are constantly developing and improving. But still, if you act according to the rules, you can at least maintain your email reputation and restore it if something goes wrong. If our advice was not enough and you want to learn more about how to send mailings so that letters do not end up in spam and at the same time sell well, you can take some proven course on working with affiliates and mass mailings.

If you liked our article and were wondering what kind of newsletters we do, then subscribe! And at the same time you will receive a gift)

The other day I was talking with a client about spam mailings; he complained that his letters were not being received or were constantly ending up in spam. I started asking what method he used to send and what programs he used. It turned out that he doesn’t even know about mail system filters, spam protection, and doesn’t even bother with copying texts.

I will look at the main reasons why emails end up in spam. At the same time, we will not delve into the technical jungle. Also, I will give some tips on how to increase the likelihood of email delivery if you are engaged in legal mailing(for spam - they may not be enough).

How postal systems work

All mail systems work approximately the same. The differences matter only if you constantly send spam mailings and try to achieve maximum delivery by sending a separate mailing for each mailer.

I didn’t send spam personally, but in my opinion the most stringent filtering is on mail.ru. People complain that even when they send a dozen commercial offers to where they are waiting, the letters end up in spam or do not end up in the mailbox at all. It hurts.

You will find the answer to many questions there.

Spam has existed for a long time, but every year mail systems come up with smarter ways to check and send it out more and more difficult. However, it is unlikely that they will ever be able to get rid of spam completely. The most strict filter will block even half of the necessary letters, which will not suit the user (even now problems arise). Therefore, mailers will always have to balance between the severity of filtering and the deliverability of legitimate messages. Spam will “live” due to this edge.

The most important thing about the email filtering system

When you log into mail.ru, you can see the following message:

All mail services have:

1. Antivirus + Antispam is usually a third-party development (like Mail.ru - Kaspersky), which works with different mail systems, checks emails for viruses, identifies spam emails and maintains its own blacklist of mailers. If your mailing list is blacklisted, it will be filtered on all mail servers using the same design.
2. Its own filtering system - analyzes all letters arriving on the server, compares them with each other, takes into account user actions in relation to letters (deleting, clicking the “spam” button, etc.), takes into account the speed at which they arrive, analyzes repeated information (links, telephone numbers, subject of the letter) and based on this makes a decision about the fate of the letter

Popular reasons for ending up in spam

1. There are many identical letters, both the entire letter and individual parts: subject, phone number, link, picture. Depends on how many emails you send in a short period of time. This is precisely the main reason why managers sending out commercial offers end up in spam. Even though people don’t click on SPAM, the mailing is still considered spam due to the speed of the mailing.
2. There are many non-existent mailboxes in your mailing list, for example, if you found some old database. If the mailbox does not exist, then the letter still reaches the mail server, and if there are many such letters, then the conclusion is drawn that this is an unauthorized mailing.
3. Send letters to trap boxes. If you used the program for automatic collection email, then trap boxes could have ended up there, deliberately left there where only the program could find them. And mailing to such mailboxes will definitely be considered spam.

Accordingly, the basic rules for good mailing are to use many different mailboxes, check the mailboxes for existence in advance, and control falling into traps.

• If you use a mailing program from your computer, then no matter how many mailboxes and different SMTP servers (through which the sending occurs) you will be identified by your IP address. Those. You should send it from your computer only if you are confident in your database and users will not click THIS SPAM. Once your IP is blacklisted, it is very difficult to remove it from there.
• If you use shells for mailings (i.e. a script installed on someone else’s hacked site), then this is 99% likely to end up in spam, because such scripts do not use digital signatures dkim, spf
• If you send messages via SMTP mail systems, you should have quite a lot of accounts so that letters from one particular mailbox are not sent very often.
• If you have your own SMTP servers, be sure to set up digital signatures dkim, spf, dmarc (if you set up the server yourself, you’ll figure it out)
• U mass mailings the technical header of the letter must contain a special presedence: bulk mark, this is a requirement of mail systems.

It turns out that all the reasons can be divided into 2 groups:

1. Your letters will end up in spam automatically if you send too often and the mail system determines that they are being sent by one person and this is not an official mailing (presedence label: bulk)
2. Your emails will end up in spam if a certain percentage of people click the “THIS IS SPAM” button

Email marketing is one of the most accessible and effective types of marketing. But its effectiveness decreases to zero if your email newsletter ends up in spam.

In this article, we will look at how to properly work with email marketing tools to ensure that your emails are delivered to subscribers.

How do you know if emails are going to spam?

Letters end up in spam in Outlook, gmail, mail.ru, Yandex mail.

What to do to avoid this, read this article.

1. The easiest way is to register email addresses with popular email providers (gmail.com, mail.ru, yandex.ru) and add them to your mailing list. If letters stop coming to at least one of the addresses, you urgently need to understand the reason. After all, if the letter did not arrive to you, then it might not arrive to your subscriber either.
2. Services Postmaster, Postofis, Mailmonitor allow you to see complete statistics on sent mailings: how many letters were sent, how many were read, how many ended up in spam, etc.
3. Domain statistics. After sending an email campaign, track domain statistics in the report of your email service, if there is one. If indicators for one or more domains have dropped, this is an alarm bell.

Why do emails end up in spam?

In most cases, mailings end up in spam due to just a few settings. It only takes a few minutes to make adjustments to your domain records, and the likelihood of your emails ending up in your inbox will increase many times over.

First, let's define some concepts.

A domain is the address of your website. It consists of a name and domain zone(.com, .ru, .ua).

DNS records are records of the correspondence between a name and service information in the domain name system. They are designed to connect your site to the server and prevent attackers from acting on behalf of your site.

SPF not set

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a special DNS record. It contains a complete list of IP addresses from which it is allowed to send email campaigns on behalf of the domain.

After setting up an SPF record, email providers will understand that it was you who sent the letter from your company’s domain. Since in history there are many cases where attackers sent mailings from other people’s domains to steal personal data.

To configure SPF, you need to determine from which IP addresses you will send emails.

If you send letters from your IP, then you need to create an SPF record yourself in accordance with the protocol syntax.

Then open the domain TXT record in the editor (in the interface of your domain name registrar website) and specify the resulting SPF record in it. After 6–12 hours, the value will be updated and become available to all DNS servers.

To check the correctness DNS settings use one of the following services:

Without setting up an SPF record, there is a high chance that your mailing will end up in spam. Since this is a mandatory requirement of most email providers.

DKIM not configured

DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is a unique digital signature. Placed in the header of the letter to confirm that sending the letter is authorized by the domain owner.

If you use services for email marketing, DKIM settings happen automatically. At the same time, technically, mailings are carried out on behalf of the mailing platform.

If you conduct mailings on your own, without third-party platforms, you need to generate a DKIM key yourself. To do this, use the DKIM Core service. And when setting up a signature, OpenDKIM will help you.

Having a DKIM key is required condition mail providers. Without DKIM, your emails will still be sent. However, there is a high probability of ending up in spam.

DMARC not configured

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) is one way to protect subscribers from phishing attacks using your company's domain.

A phishing attack involves sending users an email from the domain of a well-known company. When a person opens a letter, he is offered to download a file that supposedly contains important information. While, in fact, the download file is a program that steals personal data from the computer: logins and passwords, data credit cards, phone numbers etc.

DMARC checks whether the email passes SPF and DKIM checks. That is, whether the SPF record contains the email address from which the letter is sent, as well as the result of checking the DKIM digital signature.
By default, you will receive a report on the results of DMARC checks once a day.

If the verification fails, you will receive a notification of failed verification by email. This letter comes after every failed check. That is, if 5,000 mailing letters do not pass the verification, then 5,000 notification letters will be sent to your mail. Therefore, it is worth using a separate address to receive DMARC reports Email.

You can learn more about setting up and using DMARC on the official website dmarc.org.

The use of DMARC is optional. However, this particular tool will help you protect your mailings from being classified as spam.

Purchased mailing lists

Buying an email database is a bad idea.

Let’s imagine a situation: over the course of a year you have been developing your business and expanding your subscriber base by 20 thousand people. You regularly send them mailings, so the mail provider understands how many people you have in your database.

And so, you decide to quickly accelerate your own development. You buy a database with contacts of 200 thousand people and start making mailings for them. At such moments, the mail provider understands that such growth in the subscriber base is unnatural, and will send all your letters to the spam folder.

No Double Opt-in

Double Opt-in is a confirmation of consent to receive the newsletter. Implemented by automating email campaigns. A classic example is a registration or subscription confirmation email.

Double Opt-in is implemented as follows: a person receives a letter, opens it and follows the link. The email provider understands that he most likely did this deliberately. Accordingly, the subscriber's email address was not obtained through illegal means.

Domain and IP address not warmed up

If you sent only personal letters or trigger mailings, and then decided to send a mailing to your entire subscriber base, the likelihood of ending up in spam will be very high. Mail providers will suspect that attackers have hacked your site and started sending spam mailings.

To avoid such situations, you need to “warm up” your subscriber base. It looks like this:

• On the first day, send no more than 1000 emails. At the same time, do not send it instantly - spread it out over several hours.
• Increase your email volume by approximately 30% daily.
• Send emails every day.
• Analyze delivery rates, opens, clicks, and complaints on a daily basis. If the performance worsens, reduce the daily volume of mailings again.

How to avoid getting into spam?

First of all, you need to make the settings specified in the previous paragraph of the article. They will help minimize emails getting classified as spam due to technical factors. But, unfortunately, this cannot guarantee 100% deliverability of your mailings.

Never forget that you send mailings for your subscribers - people, and not for mail providers. If a subscriber is not interested in reading your letters, he will easily transfer them to spam with one click of a button. Therefore, always try to make your emails interesting and relevant to your client.

• Every letter should have a subject. It should briefly reflect the essence of the letter. Don't make it so long that it takes up the entire line. Also, do not write all words in the subject in capital letters.
• Send mailings from a corporate address. Otherwise, many email providers will recognize your emails as spam.
• Be sure to add the ability to unsubscribe from the mailing list. Firstly, many email providers send emails to spam due to the lack of an unsubscribe option. Secondly, if a subscriber is not interested in your newsletters, let him simply unsubscribe from them. Otherwise, he will have to complain about spam, which will lower the rating of your IP and domain with email providers.
• Don't be frequent with letters. The frequency of sending bulk emails depends greatly on the niche and your style of communication with clients, so there is no universal advice here. The standard frequency is 1–2 letters per week. Experiment and you will definitely find out what number of emails is optimal for your business.
• Content is the boss of everything. No matter how correctly and efficiently you set up your mailings, your letters will end up in spam if users are not interested in reading them. Therefore, it is necessary to understand your audience well - their needs and preferences.
• Letter-picture. Always be sure to write text message in mailing letters. If you only send a picture to your subscribers, the email may be identified as spam.
• Don't change the sender's name unnecessarily. The user may simply not recognize your company if the letter comes from an unfamiliar sender. He will not understand the details, but will simply click on the “Add to Spam” button.
• Segment your base to maximize personalization.

What to do if sent emails end up in spam?

If more than 1% of your emails end up in spam, this is a wake-up call.

Therefore, it is necessary to quickly find out the reason for getting into spam and eliminate it.

Checklist for determining the reason for getting into spam:

1. Check your SPF and DKIM settings.
2. Remove non-existent and deleted email addresses from your database.
3. Analyze the content in your emails. It may not comply with the rules of the email providers.
4. Make sure that new subscribers are added using the Double Opt-in mechanism. Otherwise, the number of spam complaints may be more than 1.5%.

How to analyze mailings?

Posmaster is a tool for analyzing mailings. All major email providers provide it.

Using this tool, you can find out the email deliverability rate, unsubscribe rate, what problems arose during the delivery process, as well as other useful metrics.
Postmaster service is provided by the following mail providers:

Let's look at the work of the postmaster service using Mail.ru as an example.

To connect the postmaster, register your mail on Mail.ru and go to the postmaster page.

Next, add your site's domain and verify its ownership using an HTML file, meta tag, or DNS. If verification is successful, you will see statistics on mailings.

The statistics display the following parameters:

• Number of emails sent.
• Number of complaints (clicks on the “Spam” button).
• Number of open emails.
• Number of emails deleted after reading.
• Reputation - the average percentage of complaints over the last month. Reputation is calculated as the ratio of the number of complaints to the total number of emails sent.
• Trend - change in the number of complaints over the last week in relation to the last 30 days.
• Percentage of emails that were successfully delivered.

In addition, Mail.ru Postmaster allows you to see the dynamics of the indicator of interest on a chart. This way, you can immediately understand whether you are moving in the right direction.

Conclusion

Deliverability rate is a key email marketing metric. After all, if your mailings end up in spam, their effectiveness is extremely low.

Monitor your deliverability rates regularly using reports from your email marketing service or postmaster. If more than 1% of emails end up as spam, check your SPF and DKIM settings, clear your database of inactive subscribers, and make sure you are using the Double Opt-in mechanism.

When developing an email marketing strategy and writing letters, always think about sending the user the right newsletter at the right time.

A month ago a client contacted us. He had welcome emails set up, but they ended up in spam. It was unknown what percentage of letters ended up in spam, on which email clients, and how many.

In this article I will tell you how we looked for the source of the problem and what we did to solve it. I advise you to apply the same steps if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Reasons why emails end up in spam

Getting into spam may be due to one or several reasons at once, so you need to check everything completely. First, you need to figure out what kind of letters are sent and to which email clients. It is important to track the moment when exactly email campaigns began to end up in spam.

What to check if emails end up in spam

• sender settings (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc.)
• On which clients exactly do emails end up in spam?
• what kind of letters does the sender send?
• where and with what parameters the newsletter is sent (names, domain, IP address)
• sender reputation
• customizing the letters themselves (layout, themes, etc.)

Step 1. Check the settings of the sender itself

Each email sender has three settings that must be configured: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Using these settings, mail agents protect users from spam. More information about their configuration and purpose can be found in the help of any of the mail providers.

There are many services for checking SPF, DKIM and DMARC. I use MX Toolbox or just send email tests to different email accounts.

To check the settings, we asked the client to send us test letters to different mailboxes (mail.ru, yandex, gmail). Then we opened each letter and looked at the settings:

• Mail.ru: “Service headers”;
• Yandex.Mail: “Message properties”;
• Gmail: "Show original."

Gmail showed that everything is fine with the settings:

In Yandex.Mail, to check, open the letter, top menu Click “more” and select “email properties”. We saw that everything was fine:

In Mail.ru we do the same thing - open the letter → “more” → “service headers”:

If the value = pass, then everything is configured correctly. Other values ​​will depend on the situation and will tell you what exactly the sender is not configured properly. The client is fine with setting up records.

Of all the tests that the client sent, only those sent to Gmail ended up in spam. This is a good hint.

Step 2. Check the sender's reputation

There is such a thing as sender reputation. The sender's reputation is the history of his behavior, which is used by mailers to decide whether to trust the sender or not. Everything is like in life. The sender's reputation depends on the history of his mailings and on the reaction of users to his letters. It increases when users interact with emails:

• open letters;
• follow links;
• add sender to address book;
• click “not spam”;
• respond to email newsletters.

Mail providers provide services for tracking reputation: Postmaster from Mail.ru, Postofis from Yandex, Postmaster Gmail. In some of them you can track where users get your letters, user reactions to your letters, the overall reputation for a certain postal service.

Since the problem was in gmail, we decided to check the reputation there. But it turned out that the volume of mailings to gmail was not enough for Google Postmaster to display reputation information:

This is a feature of gmail mail - the sender's reputation is displayed if he sends at least 200-500 letters a day to Google mailboxes. Our client sent much less, so there was no reputation.

Another feature is the lack of support for problems with mailings. For example, in Mail.ru and Yandex, if necessary, you can contact the support service, where you can get advice to avoid spam in the future, or get advice. At Google, people do not participate in such processes, everything is determined automatically using the antispam system, and all recommendations are described in the help.

Step 3. Check the domain and IP reputation

Next, we check the general reputation of the client’s domain and IP address, and whether it is included in the black lists (black list, block list). We use https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx for this. If you want to check yourself, the link will open a page where you need to enter the domain or IP address from which you send mailings:

After checking, a list of block sheets will be visible. Opposite each of them, information will be displayed whether the resource being checked is in one of the lists or not. A green checkmark and “OK” means that the requested resource is not on this black list:

The list of blocklists is quite large. They mostly include unscrupulous senders. But sometimes there are good ones. This usually happens after sudden changes in the volume of mailings, the start of using new resources for sending, or an increase in user complaints about the sender’s letters. Sometimes an IP or domain ends up on some block list by mistake. After hitting at least one of them, the sender's reputation deteriorates, because many email clients check the sender for his presence in block lists.

The most famous blacklists are “BARRACUDA” and “Spamhaus”. If you fall into one of them, then your mail will simply not be delivered to some mail systems. If you find yourself on one of these lists, take immediate action. We have instructions in our knowledge base.

Our client did not have any problems with block lists. So you need to check further.

Step 4: Checking the gray list

Let's move on to the next feature of gmail - the gray list, or, as we often call it, “without reputation”. Not only Google has this feature, but it plays a greater role there than in other email systems. The fact is that new IP addresses and domains from which mail has not yet been sent or has been sent in very small quantities have no reputation, and different mail systems treat this differently.

For example, by sending test letters from such addresses and domains to Mail.ru and Yandex mailboxes, you will most likely end up in your inbox. But that's not quite the case with Google. It determines the reputation individually for each user, and after that builds a general one, which still has less value than the individual one. To build a reputation in gmail from the very beginning, you need to send letters to your subscribers, even if they arrive as spam.

This is where your reputation begins - the reaction of users. If users really wanted to receive these letters, they will read them and click “not spam.” No one knows what percentage of people need to do this for your reputation to grow and new emails to start arriving in their inboxes. But it works like this: click “not spam” → move the message to the inbox → the next letter will arrive in the inbox. Clicking "spam" works exactly the same way. So it turns out that your reputation will be different for each user.

It is impossible to know for sure whether this is the reason client’s emails end up in spam, but it is quite likely that this is the case. However, before making a final conclusion, you need to check the rest.

Step 5. Checking the HTML layout of the letter

Valid layout is another factor that helps email clients know that your letter is not spam. Unsolicited mailings are done “quickly”, and few people in such mailings pay attention and time to high-quality layout. We have, and on the blog - detailed description, with code examples.

We asked the client to send letters in .html format. Code part:

There were a lot of incorrect things in the layout, here are a few points:

• dir="ltr" - this parameter is used to make the text displayed from left to right, it is practically not used, it is unnecessary.
• font-size:14.6667px is a strange size for a font, just 14px is enough.
• font-size:11pt;margin:0pt - pixels (px) are used in the layout of letters. The items are not so reliable for correct display, so they are not used. But it is wrong to use dimensions in both sizes at the same time.
• id=docs-inter… - it’s clear that this is an identifier, but what it’s here for is unclear.

Most likely, the letter was created using a visual editor, and then the html code was copied from there. So we ended up with a lot of unnecessary code. It is unlikely that a person entered such values ​​manually.

In addition to unnecessary code, there was not enough required code. For example, the layout of a letter should start like this:

Then everything else comes. The client's letter contained several html tags, there was no common table (the letters use a table layout), the letter was not adapted for different devices, which was very noticeable when viewed from a mobile phone.

Apparently, the letters end up in spam because of the layout. We do it as simply as possible - we set up a table with clear and working parameters, add content to it:

We send tests to 6 gmail mailboxes. Two are in spam, four are in “promotions”. The result is already very good, since most of the letters arrived in the inbox. This is quite predictable, since sometimes unnecessary and incorrect code is perceived by mail systems as spam.

Then we tried to adjust the layout several more times, but the letters sometimes continued to end up in “spam”. This means that the layout really required correction, but this alone was not enough to get all the letters into the inbox.

Sometimes not only incorrect code, but also some components of the letter (texts, html excerpts, subject of the letter, sender's name, sender's address) can affect the delivery of letters. We tried changing these parameters and tested the options. But any changes in these values ​​did not lead to improvement.

What we found out during the inspection:

To summarize what has been said, we found out that:

• records and settings are in order;
• there are no problems with the reputation of the sender, domain and IP;
• resources are not included in blacklists;
• there is no reputation on gmail - this affects deliverability, you need to earn it;
• Layout errors prevent emails from reaching your inbox.

The conclusion is quite simple: for Google mail, the sender's reputation is not enough for letters to end up in the inbox. And there are two ways out of the situation: earn a reputation or change the sender.

What's fixed

In addition to correcting the layout, it was necessary to earn a reputation. But the client’s mailing volumes were not enough to do this quickly, so they decided to change the sender.

To do this, we created an account in MailChimp. To send letters, they use common IP addresses (so-called “pools”) from which mailings have already been sent. In other words, from these IP addresses various letters are sent from different accounts. Accordingly, they have a reputation, and your mailings will not be the first - you won’t have to build a reputation from the very beginning.

Tested several times - the result is positive - letters in the inbox. This means that the reason for the letters ending up in “spam” has been found. At the same time, we tried to send the original letter that the client sent. Tested several times - it goes to spam.

Now the client sends letters through MailChimp, and the layout is redone.

If you do not have the opportunity to change the sender, you will have to increase your reputation on your own. To do this, you need to send only good letters, try to do it more often and with better quality. You can add a call to the letter to respond to the newsletter or add your address to the address book - these actions improve your reputation. The time it takes to improve your reputation is individual for each case.

This is just one of many cases that occur with clients. This time everything was quite simple, and the reasons were easy to track. If your case is completely different from this, then below there is general recommendations for mailings and maintaining the sender's reputation.

How to avoid emails getting sent to spam

In general, cases of emails ending up in “spam” are quite unique. You can always figure this out and improve the situation. If for some reason you cannot figure it out yourself, you can always contact us - we will definitely help you :).

1. Make sure you're sending emails that users want to receive. Use Double Opt-in (double email confirmation) to avoid complaints or sending to non-existent addresses. Monitor the percentage of complaints. If it rises, then you need to find the reason and take the necessary measures.
2. Monitor your subscriber base and validate it regularly. Do not send emails to users who have not been active in mailing lists for a long time.
3. If your emails end up in spam, there may be more than one reason. Often this is a combination of many reasons.
4. Emails from new resources will not always arrive in your inbox, since without a reputation they are considered undesirable by default. Earn your reputation gradually with the help of good, valid letters and newsletters, or use already proven resources for sending. Consider the peculiarities of postal systems.
5. Make sure you have everything configured correctly as a sender. The technical part of newsletters is no less important than their content. A good reputation is necessary, but it appears over time (depending on the volume and quality of letters sent), and it cannot be earned quickly. If you want good and stable newsletters, then you shouldn’t rush. If you want to speed up the process of gaining reputation, be careful - a large volume of emails sent suddenly can have a very bad impact on your resources initially. Correcting this later will be very difficult or impossible at all. The initial volumes of sending should not be large if mailings have not yet been carried out from your resources.
6. Monitor the quality of the layout, it is important not only for readers, but also for mail clients. Pay attention to the sender's name, subject line, sender's address, and the general content of the letter. Sometimes senders who want to attract the attention of subscribers neglect the quality of the text and use techniques that are used in spam, for example, many exclamation marks or capital letters.
7. Conduct preventive checks of your mailings. Check your resources for blacklists, send yourself tests, check whether emails are displayed on different devices Before sending, monitor the percentage of email openings. If it drops sharply, you can assume that your emails are ending up in users’ spam folders, and urgent action needs to be taken.
8. If you contact the mail service support service, then provide them with all necessary information so that they can help you quickly and efficiently. Know the history of your mailings, as well as what you send, to whom and how much.
9. Try not to send your newsletters too infrequently or too often. The stability of your mailings and schedule will help you not only with deliverability, but will also let your users know when to expect your emails and in what quantity.

In general, cases of emails ending up in “spam” are quite unique. You can always figure this out and improve the situation. If for some reason you cannot figure it out yourself, you can always contact us - we will help :)

What to do if your emails end up in SPAM? The article provides recommendations by following which you will significantly reduce the risk of your messages ending up in SPAM.

DO NOT send SPAM

The first and main rule.

Register a reverse DNS record (PTR)

The PTR record must contain a domain or subdomain that links to the server. For all simple (shared) website hosting servers, a reverse DNS record is already registered. If you have ordered a VPS server, register a reverse DNS record according to the instructions

Set up an SPF record

The SPF record must have a valid value. It should contain information about all servers from which you send mail. .

Sign messages with a DKIM key

For shared hosting

Sign messages using DKIM only possible on hosting with a control panel ISPmanager 5.

• Recommendations for sending bulk emails from Gmail
• Yandex requirements for fair mailings
• Mailing rules from Mail.Ru

Message requirements:

1. Use the same “From” address in all mailing messages;
2. The e-mail from which the mailing is carried out must exist. If an autoresponder is set up, the autoresponder text should contain clear instructions so that you can be contacted;
3. your customer should be able to unsubscribe via a clear and visible link that takes them to an unsubscribe confirmation page and does not require them to provide any additional information other than confirmation.

Subscriber database requirements:

1. update your subscriber base. Your database may contain non-existent addresses from which breakers can come. Such addresses must be removed from mailing lists;
2. do not send messages to users who are not interested in your newsletter. It is advisable to periodically request users' consent to receive future communications. Over time, interest in your mailing list may wane and it is much better if the user unsubscribes from your mailing list rather than marking your message as SPAM.