Why are my cold emails going to spam and how can I fix it?

Email marketer from Neil Patel Blog explains that one of the main reasons emails go to spam is a low sender reputation. This is based on your IP address and domain. Factors impacting reputation include spam complaints, bounce rates, and engagement levels. To fix this, focus on cleaning your email list, authenticating your email, and improving email content.

Email marketer from Reddit shares that it's important to warm up your IP address when starting a new email campaign. Sending too many emails at once from a new IP can trigger spam filters. Gradually increase your sending volume over time.

Email marketer from Reddit responds that focusing on engagement is essential. Ask subscribers to add your email address to their address book. High engagement rates signal to ISPs that your emails are valuable and not spam.

Email marketer from HubSpot says that to improve email deliverability, focus on sending relevant content to your audience. Use segmentation to target your emails and personalize them based on subscriber data. This increases engagement and reduces the likelihood of emails being marked as spam.

Email marketer from EmailOnAcid shares that you should regularly monitor your sender reputation. Use tools like Sender Score and Google Postmaster Tools to track your reputation and identify any issues impacting your deliverability.

Email marketer from Mailchimp explains that to improve deliverability, you should authenticate your emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. This proves to ISPs that you are who you say you are. Maintaining a clean email list, segmenting audiences, and personalizing emails are also critical.

Email marketer from ActiveCampaign shares that you can avoid spam filters by carefully crafting your email content. Avoid using spam trigger words (e.g., free, guarantee), excessive exclamation points, and ALL CAPS. Ensure your HTML code is clean, and always include a text version of your email.

Email marketer from Stackoverflow responds that double opt-in is crucial. By requiring subscribers to confirm their email address, you ensure that they genuinely want to receive your emails and reduce the likelihood of spam complaints.

Email marketer from Gmass explains that the best way to warm up your IP is to start with sending to your most engaged users first. This is because high engagement rates are great for deliverability so its a positive signal you should take advantage of.

Expert from Email Geeks states that cold emails are essentially spam and will likely end up in the junk folder as intended. Furthermore, if a sender engages in spam practices, the resulting poor reputation can negatively impact even their legitimate business emails.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests that if the emails are really useful, to stop using a 3rd party tool and move it back to manual mail, using their own links, domains, and IPs.

Expert from Email Geeks says that the business choice leads down one of two paths: stop using third-party spammers, stop hiding behind different domains, and behave like a legitimate company, or go full-on criminal spammer. They add that the former is more viable long term and that delivery rates will worsen over time if current practices continue.

Expert from Spam Resource explains that you should ensure email addresses are gathered with explicit consent. Using purchased or scraped lists will almost certainly result in high spam complaint rates and damage your sender reputation. They share that building your list organically and confirming subscriptions are crucial for good deliverability.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that a key step in diagnosing why your emails are going to spam is to test and monitor. Use seed lists and inbox placement tests to see how different mailboxes are treating your messages. Analyze the headers of emails that land in the spam folder to identify specific issues.

Expert from Email Geeks explains that the poster is likely dealing with generic corporate spam filters which are tightening and learning from B2C filters. These filters are responsive to their customers and will use fingerprinting to identify mail streams, impacting delivery decisions.

Expert from Email Geeks explains outbound emails could also be using the same IP address, so a different domain might not make any difference. Also the emails include ANY reference (e.g., image URLs, HREFs, email address in a salesperson's email footer) to your 'clean' domain, you're throwing it into the same reputation basket as the 'cold prospects' domain. I would also keep the 'cold prospect' stuff on its own ESP, far, far away from your 'clean' outbound traffic. Instead of _emailing_ cold prospects, think about using those lists to TARGET them on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. where you can upload email/MD5 lists as your target audiences.

Documentation from Microsoft explains that one reason email ends up in Junk Email is that the sending email server's IP address is on a blocklist. Microsoft uses blocklists to help prevent junk email, also known as spam. To resolve this, contact the blocklist provider to have your IP address removed.

Documentation from RFC-Editor defines SPF is a way for a domain to authorize specific hosts to send mail on its behalf. The purpose of SPF is to prevent address forgery used in spam.

Documentation from Google explains to monitor your spam rate in Postmaster Tools. It should remain consistently below 0.10%. If users are marking your messages as spam, mailbox providers learn to send your messages to the spam folder. Address issues immediately if the spam rate increases.

Documentation from DKIM explains that DKIM is designed to prevent spammers from forging the "From:" sender address in messages.

Documentation from DMARC.org defines DMARC is a email validation system designed to protect domain names from being used in email spoofing, phishing scams and other email crimes. DMARC allows a domain owner to indicate that their emails are protected by SPF and/or DKIM, and tells the email receiver what to do if neither of those authentication methods passes – such as junk or reject the message.