How To Avoid The Email Spam Folder (From A MailChimp & Klaviyo Expert)

Being sent to the spam folder costs businesses $20.5 billion per year according to California-based Radicati Research Group. With advertising emails making up nearly 36% of the world’s spam content (which is 4.3% more than adult-related content), figuring out how to avoid the email spam folder is becoming an art form. 

In the previous posts in this spam series, I’ve talked about: 

• Setting up your domain properly (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in MailChimp and Klaviyo) 
• Email list hygiene and making sure your list isn’t sending you to spam
• Content that could flag you as spam

But, as a MailChimp Expert, I wanted to tie everything together with a definitive list of things I’ve learned over the years on how to avoid the email spam folder specifically in MailChimp. 

Before you start: Test emails from the MailChimp design page do NOT behave the same way as a real, live campaign email. So if you send yourself a test email and it goes to the spam folder, it does not mean your campaign email would (and vice versa). 

Here’s what you need to know about campaign emails being sent to spam.

Transparency 

Not only should you be transparent with your audience as part of your brand values, but transparency is now required by most international spam and data protection laws like GDPR and CCPA. Be transparent by: 

Having the correct sender information 

Faking the “sender” information of your campaigns to show that it’s from a more well-known person or business just to get them to open the email will not only get you abuse complaints, it’s also illegal. 

You should also avoid changing the sender information in between resending campaigns so it looks like the same email is sent from ‘two different people’.

Pro Tip: Be consistent with your naming throughout your marketing and branding. If you’re collecting emails from your website or social media, keep the same name in your sender information so that your audience will recognize you.

Add a physical address 

You legally need to add your business or contact address to the footer of all your emails, but doing so also helps to add authenticity to your emails. Plus, it makes your audience feel like you’re more accountable for what you send. 

You can customize the address for each of your audience lists in MailChimp from one place by:

Clicking on your profile icon > ‘Account’ > Settings’ > ‘Contact Information’ > Scroll down to ‘Audiences in this account’

Don’t hide the unsubscribe option 

Under GDPR and Californian Can-Spam laws you have to give your subscribers the right to opt-out and unsubscribe. Still, some businesses try to use tactics like turning the link white so you can’t see it against the background, or simply removing it altogether. 

Hiding the unsubscribe link leaves your audience hostage to your emails, which is pointless because if they don’t want to be on your list you’re not going to get a conversion from them. You’ll likely just get an abuse complaint which can cause you to go to the spam folder for other customers anyway.

Tell subscribers why they’re here

This is less about avoiding the spam folder, and more about stopping people from unsubscribing unintentionally. MailChimp allows you to add a note in your footer about why someone is on your mailing list. This helps remind them why they signed up, or what value they found to begin with. 

In here you can add things like, ‘you signed up to receive tips via our website’ or ‘you gave us your email address in store’. 

Pro Resource: Most of the points above can be found in the footer settings in MailChimp. They make this easy by using merge tags to automatically apply your information to each campaign email. That said if you want more of a breakdown on what legally has to go in your MailChimp campaign footers, view MailChimp’s article HERE. 

Email Content 

Balance image and text content 

Well-designed images are nice to look at but using them won’t make for an effective email if you put all your content in your graphics. Spam filters analyze written text to determine if an email is safe or spammy. Putting all your text into an image doesn’t give filters anything to look for and can trigger being put into the spam folder. 

Plus for some mailboxes like Outlook, images aren’t loaded as a standard, the recipient has to choose to download them. Instead, your best bet is to balance the use of images and text. While there’s no hard and fast rule on the number or size of the images you should use, you should probably stick to less than 3. 

Pro Tip: Include alt-text for all your images. That way whether they load or not, the recipient will still get the general idea of what you were trying to show them. Particularly if you’re using a graphic to display a discount code etc.

Use links wisely 

Links can be an easy way to trigger a spam filter because they are often the way hackers will try to get into your computer. 

When using links in your copy, you should avoid: 

• Having too many links
• Copy/pasted links with long strings of characters
• Shortened URLs (because they are often used to hide the destination by spammers) 

Instead, link the text itself (also known as hyperlinking) and try to keep links to the same destination throughout. If you want a clear conversion, have a clear call-to-action (CTA) for your reader to perform. Otherwise, they’ll get lost clicking away from your content.

Want more tips for avoiding the email spam folder within your content? Check out my previous post in this series: Pro Email Copywriting Tips To Stay Out of The Spam Folder (And Get More Email Opens)

Strategy

Sending too many emails

Avoid being needy with your emails and give an adequate break in between sending. According to SmartrMail, sending between 4 and 8 emails per month (once to twice per week) can get you the most optimal open rates. But sending too few emails can also be just as bad as emailing subscribers too much. So just like Goldilocks, it has to be just right!

Pro Tip: If you’re not emailing your list enough, don’t go from once a month to twice a week all at once. It’s confusing and will likely annoy your audience. Instead build up to it, and more importantly, test it! Your list might not want more frequent emails from you so keep an eye out if your opens or other engagement metrics go down!

Warm-up your domain 

If you have a fairly new domain, you need to establish a reputation to avoid the email spam folder. The way to do this is to focus on only sending the types of emails that naturally get the highest open rates possible, and then building your way up. Things that work well include: 

• Abandoned carts
• Lead magnets
• Store purchase follow-ups

Basically, anything that engages with people who know you and are more interested in your brand than the general public. 

If you want to avoid the email spam folder it might not actually be you! Your email list can play a role. Check out my post here: Email List Hygiene: Is Your Audience Causing Your Emails Into The Spam Folder?

Set-up

Get the basics out of the way

Before you send out your first campaign (or your next!), you should have authenticated your domain in MailChimp. You should have also set up your SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) in MailChimp.

If you haven’t done this yet, check out my post here: Setting Up Your DMARC, SPF, and DKIM in MailChimp & Klaviyo to Avoid the Spam Folder

Choose a reliable email provider

When an email service provider has a lot of customers with blacklisted domains or IP addresses with bad reputations they start to get blocked by email providers like Outlook and Gmail automatically. That’s why it’s important to pick a reliable email provider that has a lot more credibility. 

As a certified MailChimp Expert and Klaviyo Master, I, of course, recommend these two email providers. But, the truth is, they are one of the best options for businesses.

Trying to avoid the email spam folder, particularly when you first start with MailChimp requires a bit of creative thinking. But, the decisions you make in the short-term can drastically affect how your emails are delivered in the future. 

As a MailChimp Expert who has helped countless clients over the last 8 years, if you’re having a problem with open rates, or need help figuring out why your MailChimp emails are going to spam, I can help. Get in touch below: