5:59 pm admin

No matter how clean your email program is, you can almost guarantee that your messages will occasionally wind up in the spam folder. One message here or there is normal and due to many different facts.

However, if you are seeing your emails in the junk folder regularly, you can take the following steps to identify what's going on.

NOTE: List quality and list hygiene WILL play a role in your inbox placement, so if you have not done a re-engagement campaign and removed inactives, then this would be the first place to start…

1. Check your reputation. If your reputation scores are below 85, then you'll want to make sure that your complaints are less than .01%, bounces/unknown addresses less than 3% (preferably closer to 1%), no spam trap hits. These are all reputation issues that need to be addressed first and foremost.

NOTE: Not all ISPs pay attention to the "score". However the score is a symptom of these other factors, which need to be addressed.

2. Check any domains that you're using in your messages, from address, etc. against URL blacklists such as http://uribl.com. If any of these domains are on blacklists, remove them from your messages (redirects will not always fix this, by the way)

3. Send a "test" from your email system. If that goes to the spam folder, you may have damaged your IP reputation and will need to take steps to fix that first.

4. Create a seed list with accounts at Gmail.com, Outlook.com, Yahoo.com and AOL.com.

5. Send a "communication" type message to yourself. (For example, a message that you would send to a business associate or family member). Make sure there is actual content in the message and not just "test" as that will often automatically send the message to the spam folder.

Check this message for a spam score and make sure that it's at zero before sending. (You want to eliminate as many variables as possible)

6. Next, send a typical message in plain text only to your seed addresses. Make sure that the spam score is zero.

NOTE: You may need to try several variations of the message to get it to inbox. If this is the case, your content is most likely the problem and you will want to work on your message content.

7. Once you have received the text message in your inbox, test with the HTML version of your message. If that goes to spam, then you may have a problem with your HTML formatting. Services like EmailOnAcid.com can help you identify the problems with HTML formatting and how to correct it. Continue to edit the formatting until it inboxes.

TIP: Once you have an HTML email that inboxes, consider creating a template and using that each time you send a message so that you can eliminate the HTML variable.

Other Things to Test:

* Different from addresses and different from domains (Preferably those that have SPF setup properly). We've actually seen a unique email address in the from address cause messages to go the spam folder (in other words, b.smith@domain.com when to spam, but bobsmith@domain.com did not!).

To recap, the elements that you should be testing include:

1. IP reputation
2. Domain reputation
3. Basic testing for IP-reputation issues
4. Testing at each of the 4 major ISPs
5. "Communication" type emails
6. Plain text versions of your message
7. HTML formatting

Author: Heather Seitz

Attention Readers, Publishers, Editors, Bloggers, and Marketers: You may republish or syndicate this article without any charge. The only thing I ask is that you keep the newsletter article or blog post exactly as it was written and formatted, with no changes. You must also include full publication attribution and back links as indicated.

This information has been provided by http://www.EmailDelivered.com and written by Heather Seitz. To find out more on email inbox troubleshooting, visit http://www.emaildelivered.com/email-inbox-troubleshooting. Don’t forget to sign up for the EmailDelivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources related to email marketing and email deliverability.

Author: Heather Seitz

May 12, 2014