How do multiple or long links affect email deliverability?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests that the reputation associated with those links may be having an impact, and including more links could increase the risk of URLs carrying less-than-ideal reputations.
Email marketer from Litmus Blog explains that certain words or phrases commonly used in spam emails, when used as anchor text in links, can trigger spam filters. It's important to use natural and relevant anchor text.
Email marketer from Hubspot Community explains that if you have too many images with links and not enough text, it could cause emails to go to the spam folder.
Email marketer from GMass Blog explains that ensuring the websites you're linking to are secure (HTTPS) and have valid SSL certificates improves trust and deliverability.
Email marketer from StackOverflow explains that if the links point to domains known for malicious content or spam, email providers are more likely to flag the message as spam.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests filtering search results to academic research by searching on Google Scholar.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign Blog explains that using too many redirects can make the links appear suspicious and hurt deliverability. Try to link directly to the final destination whenever possible.
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog explains that including too many links can trigger spam filters. They recommend limiting the number of links and focusing on quality over quantity to avoid being flagged as spam.
Email marketer from SparkPost explains that having a dedicated tracking domain and warming it up can help improve deliverability, particularly when using link tracking heavily.
Email marketer from Sendinblue Blog explains that excessively long URLs, especially those with excessive tracking parameters, can negatively affect deliverability. They suggest using URL shorteners or minimizing tracking parameters to keep URLs concise.
Email marketer from Email on Acid Blog explains that techniques like link cloaking (displaying one URL while linking to another) are often used in phishing and spam, and can severely damage your sender reputation and deliverability.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that while URL shorteners can help with readability, some spam filters flag them as suspicious, especially if using lesser-known shortening services. It's recommended to use reputable services or, ideally, use branded links.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise states that redirection can have issues - stating if the destination gets blocked, you're sending traffic to a site that is now blocked, and it does end up impacting deliverability.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that your URL structure (HTTPS vs HTTP) and whether the URL leads to a file hosted on your domain can affect deliverability. They suggest avoiding redirects in the URL.
Expert from Word to the Wise cautions against using tracking domains without actively managing their reputation, highlighting that a poor tracking domain reputation directly affects deliverability. Monitoring blocklists and user complaints is essential for these domains.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests googling “academic spam filter publications” and digging into the results to see if there was anything in there relating to the impact of multiple links on deliverability.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that using a link tracker service that is on blocklists will negatively affect your deliverability, particularly if you are using a custom tracking domain.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains that Google considers the reputation of domains linked to in your emails when determining deliverability. Linking to low-reputation or spammy domains can harm your sender reputation.
Documentation from RFC-Editor explains that while RFCs don't directly address deliverability, they define standards for email syntax. Non-standard or malformed links can increase spam scores.
Documentation from Microsoft Defender explains that it has Safe Links features, a part of its anti-phishing protection. Safe Links verifies links in inbound emails, but it can also rewrite URLs to inspect them. This can potentially add length to URLs.