If your business email doesn’t get delivered properly because it lands in the spam folder, it can impact your business in many ways. A customer who doesn’t get an urgent quote means losing a valued client because they are not getting your support responses. It also means that your marketing dollars are being wasted because the emails that you created are not reaching your target market.
Businesses rely on email messages as their main form of communication with their customers and leads. It is upsetting when you know that you sent an email and someone says that they never got it. If it continues to happen, it can hurt your business.
Email is the preferred method of commercial communication by 74% of the adult population. It is vital that you work out any problems that you may have with your business emails getting caught in the spam filters of your clients' inboxes.
There are a number of reasons that your company emails are not getting delivered. We will go through those reasons and also discuss some solutions.
Too Many Links in Your Emails
Multiple links in an email message can get it flagged as spam by mail filters. Phishing emails commonly use links to malicious sites and often they will have several links in a single email.
If you are using links to social media accounts in your email signatures, this could cause your messages to be getting flagged due to too many hyperlinks.
Keep hyperlinks in emails to just 1 to 2 at maximum.
Use of Spam Trigger Words
There are multiple spam trigger words out there that email filters are trained to recognize. Some of these seem commonplace to use in an email. You could easily be getting caught in a spam filter because one is in the subject line of your automated emails (marketing emails, invoice receipts, etc).
You can find a full list of several spam trigger words here. Some of the ones that are more common include:
- Clearance
- Opportunity
- Cheap
- Cash
- Discount
- Full refund
- Hidden
- Passwords
- Sample
Be aware of these spam trigger words when writing email subject lines so that you can avoid them.
Use of All Caps in Your Subject Line
Using all caps in your subject line can also get your emails flagged as spam because phishing scammers often do this to help their messages stand out in an inbox.
Using all caps is generally considered impolite to use anyhow because it is the internet equivalent of shouting. It is best to avoid it altogether.
File Attachments
Most users now know to be wary of file attachments because they’ve been used for so long by phishing attackers to infect devices with viruses, ransomware and other forms of malware.
This has caused email security software to be very sensitive about the types of file attachments allowed through to a user’s inbox. Some cloud email services also allow companies to block certain file types. So even if your file isn’t malicious, it could cause your email to go to a quarantine folder.
It is best to send files via a file-sharing link (when possible) rather than through a file attachment.
Large Image Sizes in Marketing Emails
It’s easy to go crazy with images when putting together an attractive marketing newsletter. However, if those images aren’t optimized, they can end up making your entire email so large that it is blocked due to size restrictions.
For example, if you have a marketing email with 15MB of images, there is a good chance that it’s going to be rejected from multiple recipients’ mail servers.
Make sure that when you add images to your email newsletters and other marketing emails that they are optimized for the smallest file size possible while remaining sharp.
Your Mail Server’s IP Address Has a Bad Reputation
If you see that a large number of your company emails are being rejected on a regular basis, it could be a bad IP address problem.
If a server has been used for spamming and enough reports come in from recipients of that spam, major mail service providers can put it on a “blacklist” and automatically reject all messages sent from that IP address.
The process to clean up your IP address reputation is a tedious one and involves contacting all of those mail providers that are bouncing your messages and providing the required proof that you’re not spamming.
You can get a bad IP address reputation if your server has been breached and used by a spammer or if you have just signed up with a hosting account and the IP address that you are given already has a bad reputation.
Here is some information on checking your IP address reputation.
Get Email Support & Setup from the Pros
Business email is a vital function and one that you don’t want to try doing all on your own. Sound Computers can help your Connecticut business with secure and smart email solutions that get your messages where they need to go.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Call 860-577-8060 or reach us online.