Why does your newsletter end up in the spam folder?
Laposta does its best to deliver all newsletters to the inbox. This almost always goes well, though unfortunately not in 100% of cases.
More than 60% of all emails sent worldwide are spam. To prevent everyone from being flooded by this, spam filters are active everywhere. In their fight against phishing and spam messages, receiving email providers are becoming increasingly strict about allowing newsletters into an inbox. As a result, legitimate email is occasionally marked as spam too.
How spam filters assess your newsletter
Spam filters assess your newsletter against a long list of criteria. Your newsletter scores points on each criterion. If you accumulate too many points, your newsletter will be labelled as spam.
Every provider and every spam filter uses a different algorithm for this. Consequently, a newsletter may be blocked by one provider and not by another. Overly strict spam filters quite often block newsletters by mistake (‘false positives’). Read more about why newsletters to Gmail and Hotmail are more likely to be marked as spam, and what you can do if newsletters to KPN addresses are not arriving.
One of the most important factors is the sender’s reputation. For senders with a high volume and little spam, trust increases and an ever-higher percentage of newsletters end up in the inbox. Laposta has been working on this sender reputation for years, mainly by preventing spam from being sent via the platform, so its reputation is good. In addition, the email must be technically sound. At Laposta, this is always the case.
Authenticating your domain
If you have not authenticated your domain yet, this is the most effective step to improve the delivery of your newsletters. With authentication, you give the receiving party extra certainty about the sender and the content of your newsletter, and therefore extra reason to trust the email.
Even after activation, there is no guarantee that your newsletters will be delivered to every inbox. The quality of your lists, your subject line, and the content and layout of your newsletter are just as important. You are responsible for those elements yourself.
The Promotions tab in Gmail is not a spam folder
Gmail uses different tabs. Your newsletter might, for example, land in Promotions. That is different from the spam folder: the email has simply been delivered.
What you can do yourself
Besides spam filters, your subscribers can also mark your newsletter as spam. This harms your sender reputation and can cause spam filters to be adjusted even more strictly. Therefore, pay attention to three things:
- A good list of subscribers who genuinely want to receive your newsletters.
- Relevant content and a relevant subject line for that group.
- The right frequency, so that you do not email too often.
In a newsletter, you can also advise your subscribers to add your sender address to their address book. This helps prevent your newsletter from getting caught in the spam filter for that subscriber. If you use Laposta’s drag & drop editor, this tip is included in the footer of your newsletter by default.
On the Laposta website, you can find 24 more tips to help prevent your newsletter from being seen as spam: how do I prevent my newsletter from being considered spam?