Chances are if you’re a solo-preneur, a small business owner or a professional, you’re using a simple email marketing tool such as Mailchimp. Installing best practices to your email marketing can improve your chances of showing up in the best places for emails.
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Why Are My Marketing Emails Showing Up In Spam?
This is a common question that I hear from business owners that I work with. The truth is that troubleshooting email delivery is a bit complicated. There are many moving parts, but there are also a few steps that we can take to improve delivery to the inbox!
Why It Is Important To Avoid The Spam Folder?
Email is still one of the most powerful and important ways to interact with your customers. It’s your direct line of communication to your most important people. You’re not forced to figure out the Facebook algorithm to get your message delivered.
Improved email delivery can drive revenue
Also, if email is am important part of driving revenue to your business, then a 5% increase in opens might increase revenue by 5%! Getting emails to show up in your inbox and under the “primary” tab can be critical to increasing sales.
5 Steps to Avoid the Spam Folder If You’re Using Mailchimp
1. Use an Email Address Tied to Your Domain
Don’t user your Gmail address to send emails in Mailchimp. I know many people do this. But guess what? Half your audience is using gmail as their email provider. And guess what happens when Google sees an email arrive from a gmail account that was sent from a server that does not belong to them?
They quickly throw a flag and say, “HEY, this is probably spam because we didn’t sent it” Check out this example below. This would be better to use the email address “matt@hockeyprotraining.com” to send from Mailchimp.
2. Verify Your Domain in Mailchimp
Verifying your domain is step one, authenticating is step two. Verify your domain under Account > Settings > Domains.
Mailchimp will send an email to the address you want to send from and verify that you have access to that email. This ensures you don’t blast emails from POTUS or some other tricky idea people might dream up.
3. Authenticate Your Domain
Authenticating is a quick step if you have access to your DNS records. You simply add two records and click verify. This is going to sound more complicated than it is, but it’s going to be extremely helpful to have done.
There’s a wonderful “How-to” here. How to set up custom domain authentication in Mailchimp.
Set up custom DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authentication for your domain and include Mailchimp in your Sender Policy Frameworks (SPF) record. Inbox Service Providers (ISPs) like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, use DKIM and SPF authentication as a way to scan incoming emails for spam or spoofed addresses. Emails that fail authentication are more likely to arrive in a spam or junk folder.
Mailchimp Help Center
Here’s what your emails will now show when they arrive in your inbox. The header now shows that it’s being sent from YOU, vs from Mailchimp App.
4. Purge Your Email List Of Unengaged Subscribers
Your email open rate is important for tools like Gmail to understand how important your message is and where it should land in your inbox (or spam box).
This of this like SEO for emails. Typically webpages that have better engagement rank higher. Emails that have better engagement show up in better places.
If half (or more) of your list is typically not opening your emails, consider taking those names off your list. This can drive your open rate up significantly. If those people weren’t opening anyway, it’s not going to hurt your business. You could also consider tagging those subscribers and emailing them less frequently.
Higher Open Rate = Better Placement In The Inbox
5. Avoid Spammy Trigger Words
If you’re writing copy in a way that seems spammy or even misleading, you’re going to get flagged. Check this list of 202 words that might cause your emails to seem spammy to an email service.
Follow these steps and see if you get better delivery. Let me know!!
Lastly, if you’re having trouble with your emails going to spam, and you’d like me to take a look, schedule a call with me here and let’s huddle about your challenges.