Campaigns go to the spam/junk folder for a variety of reasons, all linked to your domain reputation. Email reputation is tracked several ways:
- Domain Reputation (sending history of the domain)/Domain Authentication (failure to have email authentication protocols - SPF, DKIM and/or DMARC)
- IP reputation (sending history of the mail servers)
- URL reputation (sending history of links within the email)
Variables that contribute to email reputation include:
- Subscriber engagement
- Abuse complaints
- Hitting spam traps
- Invalid addresses
- Campaign content
Subscriber Engagement
Subscribers that are not interested in your email content, will not open an email. Hotels should engage with guests that have requested to receive communication. If you do not have a subscription center, the hotel should send to what the guests have subscribed to receive. Subscriber Engagement can be reviewed at the campaign level, looking at open and specifically click data. The hotel should invest efforts in driving customers to click into the campaigns. Outside of re-engagement campaigns, we suggest hotels send to customers that have click-engaged with their campaigns in the last 6-months or have recently been added to the database in the last 2 months.
Spam Complaints
A spam complaint is when a subscriber marks an email as spam. If a client sends 10,000 messages and 100 people mark it as spam, their spam complaint rate (also known as spam complaint rate) is 0.1% (100/10,000). A normal abuse complaint rate is anything less than 0.1%, or 1 complaint for every 1,000 sent messages.
A high abuse complaint rate will result in long-term deliverability issues that can take months to correct. Email providers, such as Gmail, will pay close attention to a hotel's abuse complaint rate over the past 30-60 days. Once a hotel/IP or Domain has a high complaint rate, it can take at least 30-60 days to repair it.
Spam Traps
Spam traps are email addresses used by blocklist organizations and mailbox providers to identify spammers and senders with poor email practices. Sending to one of these spam traps can be damaging to a client's sender health and reputation. While there are a few ways spam traps can be added to a hotel's list, they can easily be avoided with proper opt-in practices and good list hygiene.
Invalid Addresses
List Hygiene is critical to campaign success. Invalid addresses, or bounces, are very important for deliverability because a sender that routinely has a high bounce rate is most likely using old lists. If a hotel regularly sends messages to invalid accounts that bounce, inbox providers like Gmail will consider their email “risky” and begin to send it to the spam folder.
Hotel's that use a healthy data collection practice (double opt-in forms), will see a lower bounce rate. Some of the addresses on a list may shut down and bounce due to natural list churn. Some guests may sign up with a misspelled address (like dee@gmai.com). It's normal to see 0.5-1% of messages bounce due to these normal factors and that's just fine.
Content
Content can play a big role in how mailbox provider’s treats emails. Some content Best Practices include:
- Use a familiar sender name so that a hotel's subscribers recognize the hotel's emails
- The hotel can encourage contacts to add the hotel sender to their address book and reply to or forward the email
- Make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe.
- Don't use link shorteners (i.e., bitly)
- Don't use a full HTTP link as the forward-facing text of a hyperlink
- Don't try to use an HTML form or any JavaScript in your email
- Don't include attachments
- Don't use all CAPS in the subject line.
In summary, avoiding the spam folder and improving email deliverability requires a strategic approach. A low unique open rate can indicate spam folder filtering, so it’s crucial to monitor your email performance closely. Hoteliers should test their emails across various mailbox providers and adhere to best practices to avoid being filtered as spam. Key recommendations include removing unengaged recipients, prioritizing higher sending frequency to the most engaged contacts, ensuring all recipients have opted-in, setting clear expectations during the opt-in process, and providing a clear unsubscribe link along with options for managing preferences. By following these tips, you can enhance your email marketing effectiveness and ensure your messages reach your audience’s inbox.
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