In email marketing, everything seems simple: put together an email – send it – get the delight of subscribers and sales. In fact, mailings may not reach the recipients. Therefore, at least once a week (or every day, if you send emails as often as Lamoda), it is important to check the postmaster – suddenly the deliverability rate has dropped? If this happens, you have to quickly find and fix the problem. And if there are no postmasters, set up right now…
So, the analytics shows that emails don t get into the Inbox. Or you don t have data, but you have assumptions. Let s figure out how to get out of spam.
Important: in B2B mailers have a special attitude to mailings. The receiving party builds spam filters on its own. Each company has its own. Therefore, letters can successfully reach recipients from company X, but end up in spam at Y. In this case, your client s technical support will help.
Check your newsletter in Mail Tester
Go to the service website… He will give you an email where you need to send the letter, and will show his rating on five indicators. So you will see if there are any problems with the mailing.
Let s show with the example of mailing:
What are the problems with?
The ratio of pictures and text
What is important? Spam filters cannot check text if it is typeset with images. What if you advertise casinos and other prohibited areas? Therefore, emails consisting of images negatively affect the reputation. The attitude to mailings, which almost entirely consist of images, is the same.
SPF, DKIM, DMARC records
What is important? These parameters must be specified for each sending domain. Without them, mailings at best will end up in spam, at worst – they won t reach subscribers at all. The article “What are SPF, DKIM and DMARC and why you should definitely configure them” have described how to set the records.
Alt text in images
What is important? Spam filters love when images are subscribed. This helps them understand the content of the letter. In addition, if the picture is not displayed (for example, the recipient has blocked the function), thanks to the description the user will understand the essence of the mailing.
You can add alt-text to Mailigen when you add a picture to an email:
IP address reputation
What is important? If you do not have a dedicated IP address, contact your mailing service. The reputation of the IP is his responsibility. If you send emails through your own IP, you will have to deal with the efforts of your technical specialists.
Links work
What is important? Don t add your own tracking pixels to emails. If the message contains brute-force tracking links, spam filters may think that this is a phishing attack – a fraudulent email from a supposedly reliable source that can steal sensitive information about the recipient.
So, you have checked the mailing list in Mail Tester and found out its problem areas. You fixed them, now the rating of letters in the service is high. But that doesn t automatically get you out of spam. A student who has learned one topic has not yet become an excellent student. What to do next?
Work with your subscriber base
User reaction to emails is very important. Therefore, if the reputation of the domain falls:
- Check the base in Mailvalidator. Checking is free. If there are problems – spam traps, dead addresses – you will have to pay for cleaning.
- Resuscitate. Those who did not open the resuscitation email should be sent to the retargeting database and removed from the mailing list.
- Segment. People subscribe to newsletters to receive useful content. Divide the base and work with it pointwise.
Start withdrawing from spam
Don t expect emails to start showing up in your Inbox as soon as you fix your mistakes. This works if you track the minimum changes in the spam filters in time. But if you are not the first day with a “tarnished” reputation, then:
- Highlight the segment of the provider with which you are having problems (Mail.ru, Gmail, Yandex, Yahoo, etc.). There is no point in pulling out a domain from a spam on a mailer, with which everything is fine. Save your strength, distribute the load.
- Proceed the same as when warming up the domain: start sending emails little by little.
- Send a newsletter with a request to respond to the letter to receive a discount / instruction / promotional code. It is better if the letter is personal, for example, from a manager or CEO.
Yes, this is manual work, Yes, not the most pleasant one. But this way, spam filters will see that people not only read mailings, but also respond to them (and this is already top-level activity), and decide that your content is useful.
- Be patient. You didn t get into spam in one day. Therefore, getting out of it in one newsletter will not work. The institution of reputation is the same everywhere: it is easier to maintain a positive image than to restore a good name.
What is the bottom line?
Low domain reputation is unpleasant, but solvable. Write useful content emails, increase subscriber engagement, segment and offer users what they need. Spam filters will forgive you and allow mailings to go back to your Inbox. Let it work out!