How to prevent my campaigns from going to spam

One of the main problems when sending email campaigns is that they end up in the spam or junk folder. The positive part is that it is a problem that in most cases has a solution. In this article, we will teach you how to identify if you are facing a deliverability issue with your sends and, if so, how to solve it. 

In this article

Identify if your campaign is going to spam

The first thing you need to know is that, unfortunately, there is no way to check exactly what percentage of your sends are landing in the spam folder, but we do have a way to identify if we are facing a deliverability problem:

  • First, we need to know if we are landing in spam sporadically or generally. We can get an idea by analyzing our recent open rates: a campaign that lands in spam generally does not usually exceed 1 or 2% of open rate. 
  • Regarding the open rate, it is important to put ourselves in context: this will depend a lot on the type of email you send (for example, an order confirmation email or an automated email usually has a higher open rate than a newsletter), the sector you belong to, and, very importantly, the quality of your subscriber list, a topic we will cover in this article. 
  • How can I assess if my sends are at an acceptable open rate or not? It is impossible for all your subscribers to open your sends (although it would be great), but if your average open rate is from 7%, we can say that we are facing a healthy open rate. Beyond that percentage, we can say you have a good open rate. 
  • In this sense, it is important not to panic over an isolated complaint from a subscriber who has landed in spam. This can happen because the spam filter of an email service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) has been triggered sporadically in some way. And that leads us to the next point.
  • How do spam filters work? In this video  we explain how they are activated. Spam filters (which determine whether a campaign goes to spam or not) take into account:
    • The behavior of your subscribers (if they open your campaigns)
    • The reputation of the domain of the email you use as the sender 

    • The content and links of your campaign

      In the next point, we explain how you can prevent landing in the spam folder or solve a deliverability problem, taking into account the three factors that trigger a spam filter.

How to prevent my campaign from going to spam? 


Set up DKIM 

DKIM ( Domainkeys Identified Email) and SPF (Server Policy Framework) are two authentication protocols that serve to verify the identity of email senders. Setting them up is important for:

  • Not landing in the spam folder (since you will not trigger the spam response of an email provider)
  • You will ensure to protect your subscribers from possible virtual scams that use your company's name to steal information (phishing)

Setting up DKIM in Acumbamail is easy, you don't need technical knowledge for it, and you have a lot to gain. You just need to have your own domain for your sends (info@yourcompany.com) and access your hosting provider (where you purchased your domain). In this article we explain how to do it step by step. 


Use a high-quality list

The list to which emails are sent is the main success factor of an email marketing campaign. The quality of the list will largely determine the average behavior of your subscribers with your sends (remember that this is a factor that can trigger spam filters). Therefore, it is of utmost importance that you follow these best practices: 

  • Do not use purchased, rented, or public lists: to begin with because it is illegal, but also you cannot expect great receptivity from people who have not consented to receive your communications. Sending emails to a low-activity list will eventually lead you to spam. Moreover, it is very likely that these people manually mark your send as spam (it will appear as a complaint in the Acumbamail reports), which potentially increases the likelihood of you systematically landing in spam in the long run.
  • Regularly clean your lists of old emails that do not exist (what is known as hard bounce) and of subscribers who never open your sends. At first, it may seem that the more subscribers on a list, the greater the reach, but sending to lists with low interaction (who do not usually open your sends) can compromise your overall deliverability in the long run and end up landing in spam. 

If at first, you do not know if you have a quality list or not, Acumbamail has many resources on this topic to help you:


And finally, do not hesitate to contact our support if you have questions. Remember that we specialize in this topic and will advise you on what you need.


The sender of your campaign is important

Often, not much care is taken in choosing a sender for the campaign. Sometimes, even, a sender from any email provider is used, such as a Hotmail or Gmail address. This practice can trigger spam filters. 


The most important thing about this point is that you use an email that belongs to a domain you own. It is also highly recommended that the address exists and is not of the no-reply type, so that your subscribers can contact you directly by replying to your emails.


It is common that if you send an email from your own domain @yourcompany.com to another address of your domain, the emails land in spam. This is because the email provider knows that the email was not sent from your domain, but from a third party (the sending servers of Acumbamail, in this case). But don't worry, because this has an easy solution if you set up DKIM.


Build your template correctly

Building the template is an important point to avoid triggering content spam filters.

  • Our recommendation is that you use our template editor, which generates emails with correct HTML. It is the best advice we can give you for many reasons, it is used to create tens of thousands of templates daily, respects standards, renders correctly in all browsers, and the emails it creates adapt to different devices. We have over 260 fully customizable templates to fit your brand image and sending needs, but if you need a template specifically created for you, our design team can create a custom template for you. 
  • If you want to import your own HTML template, make sure it has correct HTML. 
  • Avoid as much as possible that your email consists simply of an image with text (this is a common practice of spammers and can raise "suspicions" for email providers).
  • It is also important that you do not use words in the subject or body of the email that may trigger spam filters.

Maintain your domain's reputation

If you have previously sent some campaigns that have been considered spam (to a greater or lesser extent) or have sent to a list with a large number of non-existent emails (hard bounce), you may need to do your best to improve the reputation of your domain and the sender email of the campaign.


A good way to increase your reputation would be to send quality sends, following the advice we have shown you and gradually increasing the number of subscribers. 


The last factor that influences deliverability is the quality of the IPs and sending servers, something that is on us. At Acumbamail, we regularly monitor the IPs and sending servers to ensure their quality. Also, all our sending servers are located in Spain, so there is no data transfer outside the European Union and you will be able to easily comply with GDPR. 


If you want to obtain a more detailed explanation about domain reputation and the main problems (and solutions) you may face when using an email marketing platform, we recommend these additional resources:

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