Online stores try their best to get the user’s e-mail address, offering various discounts and bonuses for subscription. And so the long-awaited addresses fill the subscriber base, when sending email but suddenly some customers start marking your letters as spam. We tell you with real examples why users who once happily subscribed to the mailing list change their minds, and what you need to do today to avoid this.
Why Subscribers Mark Emails as Spam
Let’s start with the main reasons why subscribers mark brand and online store newsletters as spam. According to a Litmus study , the main reasons why users consider online store newsletters as spam are:
- The company sends out too many emails or their content is not interesting to the subscriber (57%).
- The buyer has lost interest in the brand (53%).
- The consumer subscribed to the newsletter unknowingly (51%).
- The subscriber cannot understand how to unsubscribe from the newsletter (50%).
- The subscriber had a negative impression of the company’s customer service (45%).
- Newsletters do not open or are displayed incorrectly on the smartphone screen (43%).
How subscribers interact with spam
The good news is that even if your email ends up in spam, there’s a good chance that the subscriber will still see and open it (provided you’ve done a good job with the subject and content, of course).
More than half of users occasionally mark marketing emails as spam. On the other hand, about the same number of subscribers check the Spam folder and move the necessary emails to the Inbox.
- 43% of users often or very often mark advertising messages as “Spam” or move the sender to the appropriate folder. And only 20% of respondents said that they never do this;
- 48% of respondents said they regularly or frequently check their spam folder for useful information, while 18% admitted that they never look there. This means that even if for some reason your email ends up in when sending email spam, all is not lost – about half of users will open their spam folder in search of interesting offers and see your email.
- 46% of consumers reported that they often or always move marketing emails from brands they are interested in from their spam folder. At the same time, 25% said that it never occurs to them to remove emails from their spam folder.
What to do to prevent emails from ending up in spam when sending
A large number of irrelevant letters causes at least irritation and sometimes even aggression among subscribers. This is the main reason why users wallis and futuna islands email list 100000 contact leads and move online store letters to the Spam folder. Therefore, it is important to segment the subscriber base and personalize mailings according to user interests.
For example, subscribers of the online store TVOE were segmented by interests, and targeted sending with relevant content to the selected segment “Jumpers and Sweatshirts” allowed to achieve growth in all key mailing indicators: Open Rate by 133.95%, Click Rate by 38.33%, conversion from clicks to orders by 42.54%, and the average check by 337.29%. The growth of the key revenue indicator per sent letter (Revenue Per Email) was 1917.17%.
2. Get consent to subscribe from users
Few things annoy people more than emails that come to them without permission, so it’s important for an online store to get clear consent to subscribe from new users. Tell them that the emails will contain useful information according to their interests and preferences, and indicate how often you plan to send emails to make it easier for the user to agree to receive the newsletter. Send a series of personalized welcome emails with information about the store, benefits, service, and other information, immediately after subscription.
3. Configure authentication protocols
To prevent your emails from ending up in spam, you need to convince mail services that you are you. There are three simple steps to this: set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. If you don’t do this, your emails may appear suspicious, and even important messages won’t reach their recipients.
SPF is like a trusted sender list. You say, “These servers send emails on my behalf.” If someone else tries to do that, they’re stopped right away.
DKIM is your signature on every email. It verifies that the email was sent by you and that no one has changed it along the way. It’s like putting a stamp on an envelope: if the stamp is there, the email is real.
4. Make sure your emails are branded
The user should understand what store or brand they are receiving the letter from, so make sure your letter contains all the necessary information. According to understanding voice commands by Litmus and Fluent, the sender’s name is the first thing the recipient of the letter pays attention to, and it has the greatest impact on the open rate. From the very beginning, let the client know that the newsletter comes from the online store whose news they have subscribed to. And don’t forget about branded elements inside the letter.
5. Make the unsubscribe process simple and obvious
It would seem that the footer of each email contains an unsubscribe option, but according to the results of the Litmus study :
But users have virtually no problems subscribing to online store newsletters – 71% of users said that subscribing to a promotional newsletter was “easy” or “very easy” for them.
There is no point in hiding the option to unsubscribe and making the process of unsubscribing. As difficult as possible in the hope that the user will remain a subscriber to the online store. This causes nothing but negativity. And why would a store need a subscriber who is not interested in its offers?
6. Use responsive design
Adapting emails to mobile devices is one of the main topics of email marketing in recent years. Think about the design and structure of your emails, make them logical and easy to read, especially on a smartphone. According to Mapp research, 72% use a smartphone or tablet to check email. So incorrect display of the newsletter is a common reason for unsubscribing and moving it to the Spam folder.
7. Make the subject line as clear and relevant as possible
The subject of the letter is one of the first elements that the subscriber pays attention to when receiving the newsletter, so in order not to immediately go to “spam”, try to interest the user at first glance. But remember that the content should correspond to the topic. And do not play on the emotions of the subscriber – if after an attractive topic the newsletter. Disappoints the user, the chances of getting into “spam” are much higher.
Test different options to find the most effective expressions and style for your store. According to the experience of Email Growth Hackers Retail Rocket. The subject line of the letter can not only increase the Open Rate, but also shopping data an increase in CTR and conversion. For example, the online store was able to increase the Open Rate by 26.8% and CTR by 10.7% by using the urgency principle in the trigger scenario “abandoned browsing”, and in the online store mladenec-shop.ru, implementing this principle in the letter about the “abandoned cart” allowed to increase the Open Rate by 15.6% and CTR by 21.4%.