Why do emails sent from my Website or My Email Marketing Provider go into Junk Folders

Do you every wonder why emails sent from your website or your email marketing provider sometimes ends up in your end users Junk folder? (or users report never receiving an email?)  

The two kinds of emails we are talking about today ...

1. Website based emails

If you have more then a basic website, there is a good chance your website will send one off notification emails to customers.  These maybe in the form of "hey thanks for signing up" or a "forgot password" reset link or even an order confirmation (if you have a shopping cart / eCommerce option).

2. Email Marketing Providers

You maybe using an email marketing provider to send bulk marketing emails (e.g Vision 6)

How are emails sent?

Firstly whenever an email is "sent" - delivery is never guaranteed.  For example:

1. The email is sent, but the recipents emails server completely blocks the email.
2. The email is sent, but the recipents email server, puts into a "spam" folder (e.g doen't even hit the users inbox)
3. The email is sent, delivered by the recipents email server, but goes into the users "junk" folder.

These 3 things are completely out of our control (trust us - if there was a "silver bullet" : every spammer out there would be doing this).

What you can do to increase the likelyhood of delivery

Every server, every user will have different delivery rules, different ideas about what is classified as spam.   But there are some things you can do:

1. Look at the content of your email.  Does it contain any "spammy" keywords.   Ensure your email campaigns contain actual content (image only campaigns, tend to be picked up more as "spam"
2. If you are using an email marketing provider (e.g Vision 6).  Make sure you have setup relevant DNS records.  Vision 6 (and other email marketing providers) will normally flag if you are not doing this (and will provide instructions you can send to your IT people).
3. Don't assume that because an email has been delivered previously to a user, that it will also guarantee a delivery next time (even if the text / content of your email is similar).   Spam rules inbound servers used constantly evolve.
4. If you do get a bounce message - and contains wording that your email has been "blocked" due to your address / IP being blacklisted.  Don't take this personally - share this with your hosting / email marketing provider so they can get this removed.
5. Keep your lists clean.