The spam box – enemy to email marketing campaigns everywhere. They swallow up marketing emails constantly, in fact around 36% of all spam are marketing emails, and this leaves your campaigns with lower engagement rates than they deserve.  

And it also means that you’re missing out on potential opportunities to warm up prospects on your list(s).  

In this article, we list the top 3 reasons your emails are going to spam, and tips on how to dodge the spam box all together. 

Why emails go to the spam box 

Have you noticed your email open rates drop off? This is a tell-tale sign that your emails are ending up in the spam box. There are numerous reasons why emails are diverted to spam, and there are also numerous solutions to ensure that your sends land in the inbox.

#1. Your domain is not authenticated  

This is one of the top reasons why emails go to spam, and it’s for the recipient’s protection.

Spammers frequently use email spoofing to trick recipients into thinking a fraudulent email address is legitimate. Email service providers, in response, have established email authentication standards, so users know if the sending domain is trustworthy. If your domain has not been authenticated, your emails are likely going to spam. An unauthenticated domain could severely impact the effectiveness of your email campaigns.  

What to do about it 

Luckily, you can easily remedy this problem by authenticating your domain. We’ve created a comprehensive guide that, step-by-step, breaks down how to authenticate your domain. And for our Extu partners, you can reach out to your rep for personal support through this process.

Even if you’re unsure if your domain is currently impacting your email campaign metrics, authenticating your domain will protect you from future campaign failures.

#2. You’re using an unhygienic list 

Your emails may be ending up in the spam box because your sending list is comprised of bunk email addresses. An unhygienic list can tank even the strongest and most sophisticated of email campaigns.

Email lists have natural turnover.  Foremost, people switch jobs and company’s deactivate their emails; or, generally, people abandon email accounts periodically. Secondly, it’s while not uncommon for businesses to purchase lists, they are notoriously low quality and overpriced. We’ve dissected the efficacy of bought lists, and our conclusion: they don’t work. Both of these factors result in low engagement and high bounce rates.

Email service providers correlate the health of your list with how trustworthy your sending domain is. Meaning, if you appear to be using a high-bounce rate or bought list like spammers and scammers, they will push your sends to the spam box.

What to do about it 

Quality is greater than quantity. If you haven’t given your list some TLC recently, now is the time. You can start by scrubbing your list, or removing email addresses from your list that have unsubscribed, bounced, or haven’t opened your sends in the past few months (excluding recent opt-ins). For a deeper clean, you can also nix contacts that aren’t engaging with the content in your emails: clicking links, .

After your list has been decluttered, you should refresh your list with new contacts. This is always easier said than done – high-quality connections aren’t easily acquired. But there are a number of ways you can organically grow your list (and fill your sales pipeline at the same time). 

#3. Recipients marked you spam

This one can be a bummer, but it’s true – your recipients may have simply marked you as spam. Why contacts are marking you as spam can be difficult to interpret, but there are some common threads:

• They are annoyed by the volume of emails you send
• Your content is irrelevant to them
• Their opt-in was accidental

 Ultimately, this will happen to some degree; it is unavoidable. But you can still minimize its occurrence. 

What to do about it  

If you’re sending between 1-4 emails per month, it’s not likely that the volume of your marketing sends is the issue. Which means your emails are labeled spam for some other reason.

A time-effective solution that addresses a core flaw in marketing campaigns is to segment your list. List segmentation allows you to better target your content to your prospects, so they always get content relevant to their interests. You can segment your list by demographics, purchase history, stage in buying cycle, or whatever metric makes sense with your campaigns. With list segmentation, you’ll be able to dodge the spam box by ensuring your sends are delivered to engaged contacts who desire your content. 

You can also offer a double opt-in through a confirmation email. This helps you guarantee that contacts are purposefully and genuinely subscribing to your email list.

Revolutionize your email campaigns

At Extu, we offer expertly created email marketing campaigns sponsored by the world’s biggest tech vendors. Email marketing offers one of the highest ROIs of all marketing tactics, especially in the B2B space – and we can do it for you. Our platform automates the process for you, including dripping the content to your LinkedIn feed. Interested to learn more? Let’s have a conversation.