Why are my marketing emails being blocked by the recipient?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Reddit explains that spam filters are often triggered by using all caps, excessive exclamation points, or certain keywords in your email subject lines and content. Keeping your messaging clear and concise can help avoid these triggers.
Email marketer from GlockApps Blog shares that testing your email placement with tools like GlockApps helps you identify whether your emails are landing in the inbox, spam folder, or being blocked altogether, and provides insights into potential deliverability issues.
Email marketer from Litmus Blog shares that previewing your emails across different email clients and devices helps you identify and fix any formatting issues that could trigger spam filters or cause your emails to be displayed incorrectly.
Email marketer from HubSpot Blog explains that improving your sender reputation involves consistently sending valuable content, authenticating your email, maintaining a low spam complaint rate, and using a dedicated IP address.
Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog shares that improving email deliverability involves building a clean email list, segmenting your audience, personalizing your emails, using a dedicated IP address, and actively monitoring your sender reputation.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign Blog shares that maintaining a healthy email list by regularly removing unengaged subscribers improves deliverability and ensures your emails reach people who are actually interested in your content.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that a mail administrator can use Microsoft's advanced hunting feature to locate emails blocked at the mail filter level, even after the mail server accepts them, and that this feature can also identify the reason for quarantining.
Email marketer from EmailOctopus Blog explains that common reasons for email blocking include having a low sender reputation, being listed on blocklists, sending to invalid email addresses, not authenticating your email, and having a high spam complaint rate.
Email marketer from Sendinblue Blog shares that inbox placement challenges often stem from poor list hygiene, lack of engagement, sending irrelevant content, and not monitoring your email metrics. Consistently cleaning your list and providing valuable content can help.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum explains that when recipients mark your emails as spam, it negatively impacts your sender reputation. You can reduce spam complaints by making it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe and by only sending emails to people who have explicitly opted in.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares an update that their emails hard bounced and were suppressed due to their IT provider detecting hard bounces from seed list emails during a migration period, and emails are now being received after removing the emails from the dynamic suppression list.
What the experts say6Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise (Laura Atkins) shares that failing to properly authenticate your emails using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC can cause receiving mail servers to distrust your messages, leading to blocking or spam folder placement. Proper authentication confirms you are who you say you are.
Expert from Email Geeks explains the troubleshooting process for email delivery within a corporation, emphasizing the corporate's border (Microsoft Cloud or Exchange) as a key point of investigation after verifying the ESP is sending emails and suggests engaging the IT team to identify blocking rules or DMARC issues.
Expert from Email Geeks clarifies that instead of whitelisting an entire ESP, it is better to whitelist specific IP addresses provided by the ESP, especially if the ESP uses shared IPs.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that your IP address's reputation significantly impacts deliverability. A poor reputation due to previous spam activity can lead to emails being blocked. Monitoring and maintaining a clean IP is essential.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that if emails are being blocked, it's likely due to rules implemented by the recipient's IT team and suggests whitelisting Klaviyo.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that the quality of your email list is crucial. Sending emails to outdated, invalid, or unengaged addresses can result in high bounce rates and spam complaints, leading to blocking.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that Gmail might block emails if they're suspected of being spam, if the sending server isn't authenticated, or if the sending domain has a poor reputation. Resolving this can involve authenticating your email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Documentation from DMARC.org explains that DMARC builds on SPF and DKIM to provide a policy for handling emails that fail authentication checks, allowing domain owners to specify whether to quarantine or reject such emails.
Documentation from RFC 7208 explains that SPF allows domain owners to specify which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of their domain, helping to prevent email spoofing and improve deliverability.
Documentation from Mailchimp Knowledge Base explains that to prevent emails from going to spam, you need to authenticate your domain, avoid using spam trigger words, maintain a consistent sending volume, and ensure your subscribers have actively opted in to receive your emails.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains that email can be blocked if it's identified as spoofed, meaning it appears to come from your domain but is sent from an unauthorized source. Implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is crucial to prevent spoofing.