Email(s) to Spam - Tips & Tricks

Owned by Danielle Donley (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jan 26, 2023 by Emily Carlson
3 min read

Table of Contents

Overview

Club emails can sometimes end up in the recipient’s spam folder. When this happens, the end-users, the Members, won’t get to see engaging and important communication from the Club. This Guide has been created with the help of Yesware, a frontrunner in email analytics, in an effort to identify five common reasons why your emails are going to spam, and how to fix the issue(s). 

Please Note: It is important to be familiar with the FTC’s rules and regulations regarding email content. You can find more detail in the CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business. Please always be ethical and follow FTC guidelines when sending emails. 

Required Permissions

  • Admin

Low Engagement

Spam filters can actually detect the level of involvement from your recipients. Low involvement, low open rates, and high bounce rates lead spam filters to believe that your content should be flagged as spam. The more that Members engage with your email content the more likely you are to have a successful send. 

To help ensure Member engagement, create vibrant and interactive content, links back to your website, and use a simplistic content style. In addition, it is important to avoid sending emails to the same Members who repeatedly are not opening your emails. Access your website’s Mail Reporting tools in the Admin bar for more information on who is truly interacting with your content. 

Within Mail Reporting, Users can see open rates, bounces, and link clicks for each mass email sent by the club.

Clean Email List

As stated in the first tip, repeatedly sending emails to an address that is not opening or interacting with your content is a good way to get thrown into spam. In addition to this, it is also very important to make sure that the email address still actually exists. Your email send list should only contain current Member email addresses and valid opt-ins from Members. 

Delete all inactive Member email addresses on a regular basis. We recommend a weekly or monthly cleanout since Membership preferences can change so often. Again, ensuring a clean email list helps keep you out of that spam folder. 

Content Flagged 

Content is a key factor indicating spam. Content refers to the body of the email but also the subject line; both of which can contain words or phrases that could be triggers on many spam filters. 

Some rules to live by when creating email content: 

  1. Avoid ALL CAPS. Email filters catch all caps as an attempt to gain the reader’s attention. 

  2. Avoid using multiple exclamation points!!!

  3. Proofread. Proofread. Proofread. Spelling and grammatical errors are a large indicator of spam messaging. 

To really perfect the kinds of content you send to Members in order to skip the spam folder, we recommend personalizing your content using snippets. According to Yesware, 57% of Users consider messages spam if they aren’t directly relevant to them and their needs. 

Using snippets allows the spam filters to pick up that you know the recipient you’re sending to. As an added bonus, personalizing your email also increases the likelihood of your recipient engaging and interacting with your message. 

Trigger Words

Please see the list below for common words that when used in email content (subject line or body) will flag an email as spam. Increased use of these words increases the likelihood that your emails will be considered spam. 

Attachments

Attachments alert spam filters of a possible virus. Also, attachments negatively affect the load time of your email, which increases bounce rates. The reason why spam filters flag attachments, is because actual spam emails often contain destructive attachments, so spam filters automatically err on the side of caution. 

If you would like to attach something to an email, link text within your email body back to your website. 

Linking back to the website will: 

  1. Drive Member traffic to your site potentially increasing reservations, event registrations, and more!

  2. Help you avoid the flag of a spam filter that goes along with scanning an attached file. 

In addition, it is important to use a descriptive link rather than just the hyperlink. For example: 

  1. “Book a Personal Trainer”rather than http://www.grandkeyclub.com/calendar/booking/personal_training_sessions

Best Practices

FAQs