What is spam?
Spam refers to any unwanted, irrelevant, or inappropriate message sent in bulk online. While there are multiple types of spam, these messages are most commonly emails.
If your emails are unwanted, they might get flagged by your recipients’ inbox providers and trigger spam filters. Messages flagged as spam can hurt your sender reputation and result in your email address being marked as a spam account.
In short, a high spam rate reduces email deliverability, which reduces the amount of people who receive your email and ultimately hurts your owned marketing strategy.
How to avoid ending up in spam folders
To prevent your emails from landing in the spam folder, take the following steps:
1. Personalize your messages
Your subscribers are more likely to ignore emails they find irrelevant. To make sure your email efforts pay off, segment your target audience by:
- Behavior: actions they take on your website that trigger an automated message
- Psychographics: interests, goals, and challenges that align with your brand messaging
- Demographics: shared characteristics like age and income that would make groups care about your products
When you segment your subscribers, you can personalize your emails for each segment to make sure your messages are engaging. The more people who engage with your messages, the less likely they’ll end up in spam folders.
2. Don’t use spam trigger words in your subject lines
Words like “cash,” “credit,” or “100% FREE” can trigger spam filters.
When writing your email copy and subject lines, avoid using words that are cliche, obnoxious, or pushy.
3. Use a thoughtful combination of images and text in your email body
Great emails can include both images and text or just text—but avoid sending one big image or GIF as an email. Inbox providers are more likely to flag emails containing only visuals, as spammers have historically used this method to get around spam filters.
Your emails should also contain at least 500 characters of text to prevent them from being marked as spam.
4. Provide a clear option to unsubscribe
Your subscribers may have consented to be on your email list, but they have a right to change their minds. A clear opt out can actually reduce the number of spam complaints and prevent your message from hitting spam folders at all.
Include an unsubscribe links or buttons in every marketing email to remain compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act and other regulations. Use clear language to make it easy to unsubscribe.
Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform that helps you maintain a good sender reputation and email deliverability. With Klaviyo, you can segment your list to deliver personalized messages to each subscriber and use the deliverability tab to quickly identify spam complaints and improve your strategy.
Ready to send personalized emails that stay out of the spam folder? Sign up for Klaviyo today.