Did you know your event emails may go to spam instead of inboxes even though the delivery rate reported by your email marketing software tells you all messages were delivered? You think everything is going great, but open rates are low, click rates are lower, and ticket sales aren’t even close to what you need.
That’s because there is a difference between email delivery, deliverability, and inbox placement. Event emails go to spam or junk folders when email service providers (ESPs), like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and so on, think you’re sending messages that people don’t want. Google specifically tells us this in its Email Sender Guidelines:
“If you manage mailing lists or other email subscriptions, you should send email only to people who want to get messages from you. These recipients are less likely to report your messages as spam. If messages from your domain are frequently reported as spam, future messages from you are more likely to be marked as spam. Over time, user spam reports can lower your domain’s reputation.”
ESPs use elaborate filters that look not only for specific content but also learn from how people interact with every message you send. Your messages could go to spam for many reasons. Some of the most common causes are spam complaints, low sender reputation, low engagement, inconsistent sending patterns, authentication problems, and suspicious content.
For your messages to make it to inboxes, you have to prove to ESPs that you’re only sending content people want—again and again and again.
Key Takeaways
- Event marketing emails can reach an ESP without reaching a recipient’s inbox.
- Spam complaints, low-quality subscriber lists, and poor sender reputation can cause more messages to go to spam rather than inboxes.
- Inconsistent sending and technical authentication problems can affect inbox placement.
- Audience segmentation and content relevancy are essential to increase positive engagement and protect future deliverability.
Table of Contents
7 Reasons Your Event Marketing Emails Go to Spam
There are three main factors that ESPs consider when deciding whether to send your messages to inboxes, spam folders, or the Promotions tab for Gmail:
- Technical settings
- Sending history
- Content
Each of the seven reasons your event marketing emails go to spam discussed below correlate directly with one of those three deliverability factors.
Read the Event Email Deliverability Guide to learn all of the details.
1. Too Many Recipients Marked Your Previous Emails as Spam
You never want email recipients to mark the messages you send as spam or junk. If they click the button to mark just one of your email messages as spam, that’s considered a spam complaint, and ESPs take spam complaints very seriously.
ESPs set thresholds for spam complaints, and they don’t want you to get more than one spam complaint for every 1,000 email messages that you send. That equates to a 0.1% spam complaint rate. If your spam complaint rate rises to 0.1%-0.29%, some of your messages will start going to spam, and if it rises to 0.3% or higher, most or all of your messages will go to spam.
You may ask, “The spam rate in my email marketing software shows a spam rate of 0% for all of my email campaigns, so why are my messages going to spam?”
That’s because the metrics you see only tell you the number of people who actually clicked to mark your messages as spam (and it doesn’t include any data from Google/Gmail email addresses because Google doesn’t report this information to email marketing platforms). The metric doesn’t tell you how many messages were actually directed to spam/junk folders or blocked entirely by ESPs.
2. Recipients Aren’t Engaging with Your Messages
Since ESPs only want marketers to send bulk messages that people actually want to receive, it’s not surprising that how recipients engage with your messages affects where they land.
When recipients open your messages, click on links inside, file them in a folder, reply or forward them, or move them from the Gmail promotions tab to the inbox, ESPs see that as positive engagement, which shows you’re sending content people want.
On the other hand, if people leave your messages in their inboxes without opening them or take a long time to open them, ESPs see the lack of engagement as a sign that you’re not sending content people want.
Even worse, if recipients delete your messages without opening them, mark them as spam, or block you as a sender, then ESPs know you’re not sending content people want.
Positive engagement keeps your sender reputation high while both a lack of engagement and negative engagement hurt your sender reputation. The lower your sender reputation is, the more likely all or most of your messages will land in spam or junk folders.
3. You Send Irregularly or Send Too Many Emails After More Than a Month of Silence
ESPs like consistency because it’s safe. Surprise jumps in sending volume or big gaps between sends are suspicious and could hurt your deliverability.
Think of it this way, if you send an email newsletter to 1,000 recipients each week and then suddenly send a message to 5,000 recipients, ESPs will notice. They’ll think you’re using the old “spray and pray” email marketing method (the same message is sent to everyone with the hope that someone will click and act) rather than taking the time to segment your audience and only send the message to people who actually want it.
Similarly, if you haven’t sent a bulk email campaign (i.e., a message sent to more than 100 recipients) in weeks or months and suddenly send a message to 1,000 recipients, that looks suspicious to ESPs. It’s highly likely that some of those messages will go to spam.
4. Your Email List Contains Old or Unwanted Addresses
List hygiene is critical to ensure your messages make it to inboxes instead of spam folders. Avoid purchasing lists because they could include outdated or spam trap addresses. If you send to just one spam trap address, your reputation and deliverability will tank.
Also, remove bounced email addresses from your list quickly, and remove unengaged recipients after they fail to open or click three to five consecutive messages. You can always try to re-engage unengaged recipients in the future, but you don’t want their lack of engagement to hurt your deliverability now.
5. Your Sender Reputation Has Been Damaged
Your sender reputation is determined by ESPs, and each ESP has a different opinion about you as a sender. Reputation is tied to both the domain you send event email marketing campaigns from and the IP you send from.
If you’re sending from your own domain, you’re in control of your sender reputation. If you’re sending on a shared domain provided by your email marketing platform, then every sender using that domain contributes to its sender reputation.
Once your sender reputation starts to decline, you can take steps to repair it, but if it declines too much, it’s very difficult to repair it. Therefore, if you start to see your open and click rates decline, it’s very possible that your sender reputation has been damaged with one or more ESPs.
6. Your Subject Lines or Email Content Look Suspicious
ESPs use filters that look for specific words and content to determine where to send your messages. Each ESP has their own criteria. While they don’t publish the full list of what they look for (and those criteria are updated all the time), they do share some information from time to time.
For example, subject lines shouldn’t be deceptive or contain “too good to be true” claims. Messages should include more text than images and shouldn’t have a file size of more than 100kb. Links in messages shouldn’t be hidden with URL shorteners, and messages shouldn’t include an excessive number of links compared to the amount of text or links to too many different domains.
Remember, ESPs are constantly updating their spam filters based on how recipients interact with the messages they receive. Therefore, if you send a message that someone marks as spam, and then send another message in the future that uses duplicate subject lines or content, then the new message will probably go to spam. ESPs know someone already marked that content as spam, so new messages with some or all duplicate content will now go directly to spam folders.
7. Your Email Authentication Is Not Set Up Correctly
Before you send an email marketing campaign to promote your event, you need to make sure your technical settings are configured correctly. This includes your DNS (Domain Name System), SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), CNAM (Canonical Name), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) settings.
Each of these settings proves who you are to ESPs, so they know the messages you send are real and originate from you. If you don’t set these authentication settings up correctly, you could have deliverability problems, so work with your email marketing software provider to ensure you have everything configured correctly.
How to Tell if Your Event Emails Are Going to Spam
Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy way to track exactly what ESPs do with your messages after you send them other than keeping an eye on open and click rate trends. If your metrics start declining, you may have a deliverability problem that’s causing more messages to go to spam.
If you’re sending from a shared domain, then you won’t be able to access any data to help you determine if your messages are going to spam.
However, if you’re sending from your own domain, you can use Google Postmaster Tools to gain information about what Google does with your messages. Google is the only ESP that provides a tool to help you do this. With Google Postmaster Tools, you can keep track of spam complaints and identify deliverability problems before they become disasters.
How to Keep Your Event Marketing Emails out of Spam
The number one way to keep your event emails out of spam is to be a good sender. That means you have to do what it takes to get past the email inbox gatekeepers—ESPs.
Start by ensuring your technical settings are configured correctly so ESPs can authenticate who you are.
Then, create a sending schedule so you send consistent volumes of messages on a consistent basis. Never send a message to more than double the number of recipients you sent your previous message to. If you need to increase sending volume by a lot or you go more than 30 days without a bulk send, do a domain warmup to slowly ramp up to full volume.
Next, keep your list clean, and segment your audience so recipients only get content they’ll be interested in. Make sure your messages don’t include any spam flags, and avoid sending duplicate subject lines or content that may have been marked as spam by a previous recipient.
Also, make it very easy to unsubscribe. It’s much better for someone who doesn’t want your messages to unsubscribe than it is for them to mark you message as spam or block you as a sender.
Finally, if you’re sending from your own domain, use Google Postmaster Tools to track spam complaints and delivery. If you see an increase in spam complaints above 0.1%, take action immediately to improve your content, segmentation, reputation, and sending patterns.
Full details about ESPs, spam filters, spam complaints, technical settings, reputation, and more can be found in the complete Event Email Deliverability Guide.
Frequently Asked Questions about Event Emails Going to Spam
Why are my event marketing emails going to spam even though people subscribed?
Just because someone gives you permission to send them marketing emails doesn’t mean your messages will land in their inboxes. Engagement, sender reputation, authentication settings, and other factors influence whether mailbox providers send your messages to inboxes, spam, the Gmail promotions tab, or block them entirely.
Can sending too many event emails cause them to go to spam?
Large spikes in sending volume and large gaps of time between bulk sends can damage your sender reputation and cause your messages to go to spam. ESPs think both are signs of the “spray and pray” email marketing strategy (i.e., the same mass email blast is sent to everyone). Instead, send on a consistent schedule and ramp up volumes slowly.
Why does my email marketing platform show 100% deliverability but some messages actually went to spam?
ESPs only report to email marketing platforms whether or not they accepted messages, not what they decided to do with those messages after accepting them. After accepting messages, ESPs can decide to deliver them to inboxes, send them to spam/junk, or block them entirely, which means they don’t go to the recipient at all.
