Key note: To ensure you stay out of spam, you should be aiming for a minimum Open rate of 60% and a Reply rate of 10% for your emails.
Why do you end up in spam?
Spam filters don't like to see the same email copy too often or too quickly. They also don't take kindly to pictures, videos or links, which are often used by scammers and spammers. Spam filters also monitor email domain credibility which is largely determined by your reply rate (relevancy score), as this shows whether your recipients consider your outreach largely relevant or spam.
How do you know you are going into spam?
An open rate below 40% after at least 2 follow-ups would indicate that emails may be going into spam. A 60% open rate is what you should be aiming for and anything between 40% - 60% you should look to improve using our best practices guide.
It is worth mentioning that although open tracking is never 100% accurate, as some Email Clients (Outlook, Gmail etc) block open tracking, 40% is a good indicator that a proportion of your emails are likely to be going into spam.
You can run a test through a service such as GlockApps to determine whether you have an issue with a particular inbox (@yahoo, @gmail, etc.) or not.
Getting out of spam
Going into spam is usually only temporary and normally takes about 4-6 weeks to get out of. You should follow the below guide to get yourself back into inboxes:
Lower your daily sending volume and increase the time between emails on your profile. A maximum suggested daily sending limit to improve deliverability would be 50 and at least 180 seconds between each email.
We often find email copy is too broad for an audience and you should consider subdividing your target list/audience to find common characteristics you can include in your copy to make your email more targeted and personalised for the recipients. This will encourage more responses which will boost your email domain credibility.
Change the content of your email copy, including your signature, every 1000-1500 emails. Your email signature is a block of text that always appears in your emails and can therefore sometimes be classed as spam if it has been associated with spammy behaviour in the past.
Avoid increasing your daily sending limit to clear a backlog of emails as this creates a spike in sending which greatly impacts deliverability and usually results in more emails going to spam. You can pause campaigns if you need to prioritise one campaign over another.
Avoid using pictures, videos and unbranded links in your emails, including in your email signature. A text-based email signature that identifies you, your company and your contact details work best.
You can always send your email copy to friends and ask them to respond to your email, move it out of spam and mark it as "important" to boost your credibility and help get you out of spam.
Remember once you are getting better open rates, increase your daily sending limit slowly. Make sure to monitor your open and reply rates so that you continue to improve and can re-adjust if they start to drop again.
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