Why are Emails Landing in the SPAM Folder?

Why are Emails Landing in the SPAM Folder?

Overview

Email deliverability is crucial for educational institutes that rely on email communication for admissions, student updates, and event notifications. However, emails may sometimes land in spam folders instead of inboxes due to various factors, including poor domain reputation, content issues, and recipient engagement.

This article outlines key reasons why emails may be marked as spam and how institutes can mitigate these risks to improve deliverability.

Plan & Permissions

  • Ensure that your institute has configured essential email authentication protocols, such as CNAME mapping, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

  • Regularly monitor unsubscribe rates and spam reports to maintain a good sender reputation.

  • Use only verified and high-quality lead data to prevent domain blacklisting.

1. Leads from Publishers and Offline Uploads

  • First thing we should check for the number of leads that are registered for the institute from Publishers and Offline Uploads is the traffic channel. This can be checked from the Campaign Manager.

  • We all know that some of the leads pushed by the publishers or uploaded offline can be poor in quality and if the communication is sent to them, then it can directly affect the domain health of email communication, as receivers might report spam or unsubscribe the same - Doing this will also affect the delivery rate of the emails going out to the leads that are coming from other valid sources

Notes
Note: Registered email can be filtered out using the filter "email status" in Lead Manager.

2. Number of contacts uploaded as Raw Data and the number of emails sent to them

  • The raw data might have poor quality of email contacts and communication sent on them can directly affect the domain health as there is no definite source of raw data contacts

  • We have seen that institutes send email communication to the raw data contacts in a very large number which can directly affect the email domain health, leading the mails to land in SPAM folders.

3. CNAME Mapping

  • CNAME records link one domain to another domain.

  • CNAME mapping is one of the best practices that institutes need to follow while executing the email marketing campaigns.

  • CNAME of the email domain is used to alias one name to another and authenticate the email vendor to send the communication on the actual domain’s behalf. This helps the clients to identify that the emails are being sent from an authentic source and not from an anonymous person or tool.

4. SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication standard developed by AOL that allows you to list all the IP addresses that are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain.

  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is one of three internet standards for email authentication that help organizations fight against email fraud, spam, phishing, and other attacks that depend on forging emails. SPF is designed to be used along with the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) protocols. SPF provides email senders with a toolkit to prevent unauthorized users from using their domain to send forged or spoofed emails.

Threats from unauthenticated email:

When all email is handled as if it were legitimate -- which is what happens when no email validation or authentication protocols are in use -- it opens the door to several types of attack: 

  • Spam is an unwanted email. Spammers send emails for many reasons, sometimes to promote an otherwise-legitimate product. But, more often, it is to promote scams, gather information, or attack the email infrastructure of an organization with the intent to disrupt email services. 

  • Spoofing is a technique email attackers use to convince the recipient that their messages are being sent by someone other than the apparent sender. Email spoofing is often a part of business email compromise and whaling attacks. 

  • Phishing is a type of attack carried out through email that aims to manipulate recipients into taking action that furthers the attacker's goals. The combination of these protocols gives the ability to significantly reduce email threats. 

SPF works best when email-receiving entities run an SPF check on the domain owner or the email service provider that sends an email on behalf of a domain owner.

Implementing SPF:

Individuals or small organizations that get email through email service providers should check with their providers to make sure their email servers implement SPF. Most large email service providers currently use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to reduce email forgeries, spoofing, and other malicious emails.

Domain-owning organizations that want to implement SPF should consider a gradual rollout of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC together. To support these protocols, the domain owner must do the following:

  • Publish DNS TXT records for each protocol; and

  • Configure email servers to accept and take action on emails authenticated using these protocols.

5. Content sent in emails

  • Check for the email content that has been sent by the college users

  • We have to make sure that they are following the best practices for email marketing campaigns while creating the templates and sending the communication

  • Keywords in the subject line such as Hurry, Best Offer, Discount, etc can be marked as spam via email clients (Gmail, Outlook). It is recommended to avoid them.

  • We should check for spammy content and inform the institute of the same in case they are following any such practices.

6. Unsubscribe rate and SPAM Report

  • We also need to check how the end receivers are engaging on the email templates.

  • Apart from open rate and click rate, we should also check for the unsubscribe rate and spam reports on the email communication sent. This will tell how the users are engaging on the email sent to them.

  • If the unsubscribe rate and SPAM report numbers are big, then we should guide the clients accordingly.

7.Email domain health check (MX tool)

  • There are many tools present online that can tell us about the health of the domain.

  • You can check the email domain health by using the following link - https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

  • If the report says that the domain is blacklisted, then you should inform the clients immediately and ask them to get it fixed at their end

  • You can also check the email deliverability score by using https://www.mail-tester.com/ tool. It calculates the score on the basis of how technically right your email is and tells you the exact reason for the same.

8.Sending test emails

  • You should always check the same by sending a few test emails on some of your personal and official email IDs.

  • This will tell you if the emails are actually landing in the SPAM folder for everyone or just the institute.

Conclusion

Spam filters are constantly evolving, and maintaining good email deliverability requires a proactive approach. By ensuring domain authentication, improving lead quality, optimizing content, and monitoring engagement metrics, institutes can reduce spam complaints and improve inbox placement.

Regularly testing email deliverability and using dedicated IPs can further enhance the effectiveness of email campaigns, ensuring that critical communications reach students, parents, and prospects reliably.