When you send an email, the last thing you want is for them to land in spam. Still, if you don’t get any replies from your audience, there’s a huge chance that your emails do land in the spam folder without you even knowing it.

In this article, you’ll find out why your emails are landing in spam, why you should care about deliverability if you send emails, and the top 10 best practices to avoid the spam folder.

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Why do emails go to spam?

Email service providers check your emails to decide if they belong to the inbox or spam folder.

5 main factors influence where your emails are sent:

1. Your sender reputation: have you been sending spam in the past?
   
   
2. Email content: is your email content safe or has spam-trigger words? 
   
   
3. Spam traps: are you sending emails to unverified email addresses?
   
   
4. User reports: has your audience reported your emails as spam?
   
   
5. Email authenticity: have you verified your identity as a sender? 
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If your emails trigger any of these factors, there are huge chances that your emails land in spam.

So, how to keep your emails out of spam and land them in your audience’s inbox?

The ability of your emails to land in your audience's inbox depends on your email deliverability.

That’s why you should always monitor your deliverability and check your deliverability score before, during, and after sending your email campaigns. If your deliverability score is low, you might have deliverability issues that send your emails directly to the spam folder.

Here are 10 ways to improve it and avoid the spam folder.

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10 Tips to Prevent Emails From Going to Spam

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1. Warm up your email

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Think about the warm-up process as a protection for your emails that prevents them from landing in spam. Email warm-up gradually increases the number of emails sent from your account to boost your email engagement and deliverability.

How email warm-up improves the deliverability of your emails:

• shows email providers that your emails aren't spam
• matches "human behavior" which is a good sign for your email provider
• helps you avoid spam filters

Warming up your email manually can be a time-consuming process. Plus, you need to make sure you do this every single time when you send campaigns.

The best way to warm up your email is to use a warm-up and deliverability booster like lemwarm. It creates a personalized deliverability strategy based on your goals and email characteristics. This helps you build a strong email reputation and improve your deliverability score to avoid spam folder.

Check out the improvement in this user's deliverability score within 3 weeks of using lemwarm 👇

2. Complete your email authentication

Completing your technical setup or email authentication ensures that your emails are delivered to your audience. Email providers use this to verify your sender identity.

You can do your technical setup in 5 simple steps:

Step 1: Set up your SPF

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. This verifies that your emails have been sent from your domain.

Step 2: Set up your DKIM

DKIM stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail. This guarantees that your emails are not changed after they are sent.

Step 3: Set up your DMARC

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. This helps protect your domain from attacks, phishing emails, etc.

ℹ️  Here's a guide to help set up your SPF, DKIM, DMARC

Step 4: Set up your MX Record

MX Record stands for your ‘mail exchange’ record. This helps providers know what servers accept emails for your domain. Without it, you won’t be able to receive emails.

ℹ️  Here's a guide to help set up your MX Records

Step 5: Set up your Custom Tracking Domain

This allows you to track open and click rates in your emails safely.

ℹ️  Here's a guide to help set up your Custom Tracking Domain

You can use your warm-up and deliverability booster to check your technical setup. ⬇️

3. Personalize your emails

Personalizing your emails prevents them from looking like spam and earns your audience’s trust. It shows that your email is written specifically for them. Making your emails stand out is a great way to get more replies from your audience.

But it can be time-consuming if you have a large audience. The best way to personalize emails at scale is to use custom tags.

Here are 3 custom tags you can use on lemlist to catch your audience’s attention:

• {{firstName}}
• {{companyName}}
• {{painPoint}}

You can also check out this guide to help you personalize emails at scale.

4. Add an unsubscribe button

An unsubscribe button allows your subscribers to opt out of receiving your emails. You can remove them from your email list and prevent getting spam complaints. This is important no matter the type of emails you send: cold emails, newsletters, transactional emails, etc.

5. Avoid clickbait in your subject lines

Your emails will either be opened or marked as spam based on how well you write your subject line. It should hook your audience, nudge them to read the email, and check the value they could get from you.

But always ensure that the promise in your subject line matches the content of your email. If not, your audience could mark it as spam.

6. Verify your subscriber or email list

Your email list is all the people you’re reaching out to via your emails. Sending emails to invalid addresses increases your bounce rate. This ruins your email reputation, lowers your deliverability score, and sends your emails to spam!

Verifying your email list prevents this by telling you which email addresses on your list are undeliverable or invalid. Also, avoid buying email lists online. Email providers put spam traps in these lists. Spam traps are fake email addresses to check if you're sending emails to a verified list or not.

You can use tools like Debounce or Bouncer to verify your email list quality.

Before sending, check your email list for such typos to make sure your email is delivered 👇

7. Don’t use spam trigger words

Some words in your emails can trigger spam filters and land your emails in the spam folder. The overuse of these “spam trigger words” ruins your deliverability.

Here’s a list of the top 12 spam words to avoid in your emails:

8. Don’t use link shorteners & attachments

Link shorteners are common in spam and phishing emails. And attachments are known to carry viruses. So, avoid using these elements to prevent getting flagged as spam by email filters.

Instead, you should hyperlink your text or insert the entire link in your emails. This protects your deliverability and lets you share files with your audience.

9. Follow proper sending practices to avoid spam filters

An underrated action that helps you avoid spam is sending emails correctly. Keep a natural pace that matches human behavior while sending emails.

Here are some sending tips to avoid the spam folder:

• send between 50-200 emails per day, per address
• don’t send all emails at once; spread them throughout the day
• for every 200 emails you send, aim to get at least 50 replies

10. Don’t use complex HTML

Complex HTML can have broken code that triggers email providers. This reduces the chances of email delivery and can land your email in spam even if it’s delivered. To avoid this, use simple variables to personalize your emails.

Final thoughts

Only one thing can stop your emails from going to the spam folder: your deliverability. The next time you send emails, use the tips in this article to make sure they reach your audience and help you get more replies and better results 🚀.

And if you want to:

• save time by automating your email warm-up
• get a personalized deliverability-boosting strategy
• and monitor your deliverability with detailed reports

… you should get a warm-up and deliverability booster!

Find out more about this in our deliverability guide here 🙌

PS: you can subscribe to lemwarm's weekly newsletter for more such expert deliverability tips, guides, and updates to keep your emails away from spam 🚀

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GMass is shutting down its email warm-up services, and other warm-up tools are following suit. What does this mean for your email outreach? In this article, you’ll find out why most warm-up tools will shut down in the coming months and what you can do next to keep your emails from landing in spam.

Why is GMass shutting down its email warm-up service?

There is one main reason why GMass and other warm-up tools are shut down or about to disappear in the coming months: Google.

Most email warm-up tools, including GMass, use Gmail API to provide their services. Google decided that GMass and other warm-up tools out there would risk losing their Gmail API access if they didn’t shut down their warm-up services.

So, to maintain access to the Gmail API, GMass, and other warm-up tools have decided to disable their email warming features.

We saw this coming — here’s why lemwarm will keep working

In August 2022, we stopped using Google’s API to make our warm-up and deliverability service IMAP-based. Along with a new and improved algorithm, lemwarm is now one of the best warm-up and deliverability boosters on the market, 100% reliable and safe to use for anyone out there sending cold emails, newsletters, transactional emails, or simply reaching out to an audience via email.

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So, how to avoid deliverability issues when sending emails?

If you send emails to an audience, you should check your deliverability before, during, and after sending your campaigns. Only by monitoring your deliverability score, you can prevent your emails from landing in the spam folder.

You can take different actions to increase your deliverability, but keep in mind that only by using an email warm-up and deliverability booster, you can make sure your emails will be received by your audience in their inboxes.

Here are 4 easy steps to start improving your deliverability.

1. Do your technical setup

Your technical setup shows email providers that you are a verified sender and that your emails are safe. This keeps them away from the spam folder.

You can do your technical setup in 5 simple steps:

Step 1: Set up your SPF

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. This verifies that your emails have been sent from your domain.

Step 2: Set up your DKIM

DKIM stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail. This guarantees that your emails are not changed after they are sent.

Step 3: Set up your DMARC

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. This helps protect your domain from attacks, phishing emails, etc.

ℹ️  Here's a guide to help set up your SPF, DKIM, DMARC

Step 4: Set up your MX Record

MX Record stands for your ‘mail exchange’ record. This helps providers know what servers accept emails for your domain. Without it, you won’t be able to receive emails.

ℹ️  Here's a guide to help set up your MX Records

Step 5: Set up your Custom Tracking Domain

This allows you to track open and click rates in your emails safely.

ℹ️  Here's a guide to help set up your Custom Tracking Domain

2. Keep a healthy mailing list

Having invalid email addresses in your list increases your bounce rate and ruins your sender reputation. Verify your email list regularly, and never send emails to unsubscribed people.

Check out bouncer.io or debounce to make sure you only send emails to valid addresses.

3. Send high-quality emails

Email providers check if your audience is engaging with the emails you send. The only way to get opens and replies is to personalize your emails and always provide value. Here’s how you can make your emails unique and well-structured to stand out in your audience’s inbox.

If you have a large audience, a tool like lemlist can help you send personalized emails at scale and 10x your business growth 🙌

4. Maintain a good sender reputation

A good sender reputation avoids suspicion from email providers and keeps your emails away from spam. Make sure to follow email-sending best practices.

Use these tips while sending emails to avoid landing in the spam folder:

• send between 50-200 emails per day, per sender
• spread your sending schedule throughout the day, don’t send them all at once
• make sure to get at least 1 reply for every 4 emails you send

Check out the Ultimate Email Deliverability Checklist for more tips to improve your deliverability so you can land your emails in your audience’s inbox. 🚀

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What email warm-up service should you switch to?

Your next step is to choose a safe and reliable warm-up tool like lemwarm.

lemwarm is the most complete email warm-up tool and deliverability booster on the market that can help you achieve a high deliverability score and maintain it in the long run.

The tool is used by 10,000 people worldwide and keeps their cold emails, newsletters, and transactional emails away from spam.

Why is lemwarm the best warm-up & deliverability booster on the market?

With lemwarm, you can personalize your deliverability strategy - warm-up and deliverability booster process - based on your goals and email characteristics. This helps you build a strong email reputation and improves your deliverability score to avoid the spam folder.

The best part? It runs 100% on auto-pilot.

So, here’s how you can avoid the spam folder forever with lemwarm:‍

1. Keep your deliverability high with detailed reports & custom tips

You can monitor all factors impacting your email deliverability on a single dashboard. For example, if you’re on any blacklist, have a bad spam ratio, or missed your technical setup.

With custom tips for maintaining a high deliverability score, you can take quick action to continue sending your emails to your audience’s inbox.

Get detailed reporting and use the custom tips on your lemwarm dashboard to avoid the spam folder:

‍2. Avoid the spam folder with a custom deliverability strategy

You get a custom warm-up strategy based on the information you provide. lemwarm assigns you to a smart email cluster based on your industry and audience. This will increase your deliverability and chances of landing in the primary inbox.

Send ultra-personalized warm-up emails to boost your deliverability with this quick setup:

3. Improve sender reputation with human-like conversations

One of the biggest differences between lemwarm and other warm-up tools is that lemwarm comes with reliable and accurate warm-up emails based on users’ target audience.

The tool automatically starts conversations with 10,000+ real users with up to 25+ years of domain age and great reputation instead of talking with fake email addresses or bots. In the long run, this results in more accurate stats and a higher deliverability score for all users.

lemwarm’s warm-up emails are realistic to boost your deliverability further:

Here’s what you can do automatically with lemwarm’s smart cluster feature:

✅  sent ultra-personalized warm-up emails based on your industry and email goals

✅  get relevant replies & follow-ups on your warm-up emails that improve your sender's reputation

✅  send warm-up emails during your audience’s working hours to boost your deliverability with the smart scheduling feature

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Final thoughts

If you’re sending cold emails, newsletters, or any type of email, and you’re not using a warm-up and deliverability tool, your audience might not even get your emails. With all the warm-up tools shutting down, choosing a safe and long-term solution is important for your outreach success.

10K salespeople, entrepreneurs, marketers, and ‘email senders' avoid the spam folder by keeping lemwarm ON before - during - after sending campaigns.  🚀

So, if you want to:

1. save time and money by automating your warm-up process
2. make sure your audience gets your emails
3. increase your deliverability score over time
4. get personalized deliverability tips and access FREE tips & guides

… get your lemwarm account now 🔥

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PS: you can subscribe to lemwarm's weekly newsletter for expert deliverability tips, guides and updates to keep your emails away from spam 🚀

Are you sending cold email campaigns, newsletters, transactional emails or simply reaching out to your audience via emails?

Then you should start monitoring your deliverability to make sure that your emails land in your audience’s inbox.

In this article, you’ll see why your email deliverability matters and how to avoid the spam folder with a warm-up and deliverability booster like lemwarm - used by 10,000+ customers worldwide.

So, if you want to get directly into your target’s inbox and generate more business opportunities, keep reading as you’ll discover: 

• Why should you care about email deliverability?
• What’s the best way to ensure a high deliverability score?
• How can lemwarm boost your deliverability?
• How to set up your deliverability booster and land in your audience's inbox? 

Why should you care about your email deliverability?

Email deliverability is the ability to deliver emails right into your target’s primary inbox.

So, why should you care about yours?

Because it measures if your emails are successfully reaching out to your audience.

No emails in the prospect’s inbox = No replies = No meetings = No business growth opportunities. That’s why low deliverability often results in low ROI, putting your business at stake.

As your emails can land in the spam folder without you knowing, having a warm-up and deliverability booster helps you spot and prevent any deliverability troubles.

What’s the best way to ensure a high deliverability score?

The deliverability score presents the ability of all your emails to land in the primary inbox. The higher the number is, the more likely your emails will reach out directly to your audience and help you create new business opportunities.

If you want to have a high deliverability score, you should warm up your email address. Email warm-up is a process of gradual increase in your email sending volume in order to build a good domain reputation.

By ensuring human-like activity, the warm-up process keeps your email activity balanced and makes sure you stop landing in spam. Receiving emails regularly is crucial since non-consistent sending behavior can trigger warnings to your email provider.

But, sending a lot of emails manually to a fixed schedule can be a pain as it requires a lot of resources. That’s where deliverability boosters come in handy, as they 100% automate your sending efforts.

Why do you need a deliverability booster before, during, and after sending emails?

There’s a false belief that people can warm up their emails for 2 weeks before sending emails and that should ensure high deliverability.

But, even if you do that, your emails can still land in spam. Why? Because if you stop your warm-up process all of a sudden, your uneven sending pattern will be a trigger to your email provider.

The warm-up is like a protection tool for your emails. Just like peanut butter and jelly, warm-up goes hand-in-hand with your emails. If you continuously warm up your domain, your emails will be moved from spam to inbox, which teaches email providers that they shouldn’t initially end up in spam. 

Once you initially warm up your email, there’s the booster stage where your deliverability will maintain high for the long run, as long you keep your deliverability booster ON.

How can lemwarm boost your deliverability?

1. Avoid the spam folder with a tailored deliverability strategy

To keep your emails warm for the long run, you’ll get the tailored-up warm-up strategy. lemwarm will gradually increase the number of emails sent until the perfect delivery is achieved, keeping your emails away from the spam folder.

And to make sure you leave the best impression for your email provider, you’ll get assigned to a specific email cluster according to your industry, audience, and email goals. This will keep your warm-up emails related to your business which increases your chances of landing in the primary inbox.

2. Improve sender reputation with human-like conversations

Instead of talking with fake email addresses, you can automatically start conversations with 10k+ real users with up to 25+ years domain reputation.

Because of ultra-personalized emails under the assigned clusters, conversations under the same thread give the impression that they’re written and sent manually. 

The human-like activity will be a good sign for your email provider and leave a positive impact on your email domain and IP reputation.

3. Maintain high deliverability with a detailed deliverability report

By having access to a detailed deliverability score dashboard, you can make sure you’re not present on any blacklist.

You’re able to monitor your inbox reputation and deliverability, and apply exclusive lemwarm tips to keep a high deliverability score.

All data available helps you react promptly and maintain a healthy domain reputation aka reach out straight to your audience each time.

How to set up your deliverability booster and land in your audience's inbox? 

1. Configure your account

Without the technical skills needed, you can set up your deliverability booster within a few-minute process.

Once you log into your lemwarm account, you’ll see the dashboard with 4 simple steps that will get you started:

So, let’s see how each of them can help you reach out your target audience.

Step 1: Choose your plan

Depending on your business needs, choose between two lemwarm plans - Essential and Smart:

What’s the main difference between these two plans?

• The essential plan helps you improve and maintain high deliverability by sending generic emails and monitoring your deliverability score.
• Smart plan users have that extra boost thanks to features such as the smart cluster and smart content emails. Those will help you personalize your warm-up emails based on your goals, targeted audience, or industry.

Before purchasing, you want to make sure you used the correct address and billing data in the Billing & Invoices tab.

Once you choose the most suitable plan for your business, you’ll be ready to connect your email provider.

Step 2: Connect your email provider

There are two ways to connect your email address to lemwarm:

1. If you have Office 365 account, you’re able to connect it right away by using a “Connect” button.
2. If you’re using Google and other email providers, enter your login information:

Keep in mind that if you choose to connect your Gmail account, you’ll have an additional step as a new way to avoid any potential disconnection.

To set up your Gmail account smoothly, follow the How to connect your email provider with lemwarm guide we’ve prepared for you.

Step 3: Verify your email address

By clicking on the “Verify your email” button, you’ll receive a verification email (in the inbox of the email you used to log in on lemwarm):

To verify your account email, simply click the link in your email. And voilà! You’re ready to start warming up your account.

Step 4: Start lemwarm

By clicking on step 4 “Start lemwarm” button, you’re authorizing lemwarm to send and reply to warm-up emails for you:

From now on, you can track your DNS check which will tell you if there’s something you should do to improve your setup:

Now, you’re ready to customize your settings even further to maximize the deliverability according to your domain age and business details.

2. Customize your settings

Whether you have an old or brand new email address, these smart settings will help you keep your email warm for the long run:

Set up smart ramp-up & warm-up

Based on your email domain’s age, you’ll need the right strategy to increase the number of emails sent until the perfect delivery is achieved.

To set up your ramp-up and warm-up settings, go to the Cockpit:

From here, you can indicate:

1. The number of warm-up emails lemwarm will send per day after ramp-up

This value will be the limit of total emails that can be reached per day with lemwarm. Once this limit is reached, the increment stops.

• If your email account is < 6 months old this maximum number should be 30.
• If your email account is > 6 months old this maximum number should be 40.

2. The ramp-up increment value per day

You want to gradually send warm-up emails over the days to progressively reach the maximum number you set.

• If your email account is < 6 months this value should be 1.
• If your email account > than 6 months this value should be 2.

The initial warm-up will last one month. Once completed, you should see your open rates hit 50%+ levels.

During the initial warm-up phase, try not to send outreach campaigns at all. But, in case you really need to, we strongly suggest you keep your volumes lower:

• 25-50 emails a day during week 1
• 50-100 emails during week 2

…and increase gradually week after week.

After the initial warm-up phase, you can start sending campaigns, but beware - if you want to hit 80% open rates and never go to spam, keep your lemwarm ON.

Activate the smart cluster

This feature will allow you to send automated and ultra-personalized emails from your inbox based on your audience and email goals. Each message and subject line will be generated based on the info you put into the smart cluster questionary.

Why is that important? Because email providers will check out the content you’re sending and evaluate it. That’s why email exchange relevant to your business increases your sending reputation and helps you achieve better deliverability results.

So, to boost your deliverability score, tailor the content according to your business requirements as shown below:

P.S. Emails that your account sends and receives for the warm-up process are automatically labeled in your inbox so that you can filter them out and keep them out of your primary inbox.

Here’s how:

To keep your lemwarm emails away from your Outlook’s primary inbox, check out this video.

3. Monitor deliverability score

At any time, you can check the deliverability reports, monitor your inbox reputation, and apply lemwarm’s exclusive tips that help you keep a high deliverability score.

Within your Dashboard interface, you’ll have access to your deliverability score and tips on how to improve it:

If your deliverability score is:

Red -> You might be blacklisted, have a bad DNS, or wrong configuration. Whatever it’s your case, you’ll be in the know thanks to lemwarm tips.

Orange -> It means your results are not optimal yet. You can start sending campaigns but keep them low in volume.

Green -> You’re ready to start sending campaigns, but make sure to keep lemwarm active at all times to keep the results good.

You can also pick a time frame and get a detailed report containing:

• total lemwarm email sent including emails & replies sent to other users
• total lemwarm email saved from spam & categories

• a full overview of where your emails are landing

• and a full overview of where your replies are landing in other users’ email boxes

All these reports will keep you aware if your messages are reaching out to your audience and what are the steps to improve your deliverability.

The key takeaways

If you want your emails to land in your audience’s inbox, your need to improve and maintain your deliverability.

To make sure that you don’t lose any growth opportunities, you should use a warm-up and deliverability booster that will keep you away from spam.

So, if you want to:

1. Save time and money by automating your warm-up process
2. Gain a good sender reputation with a tailored strategy
3. Maintain high deliverability with detailed reporting

…get an account on lemwarm. 🔥

P.S. You can check out our help articles for even more instructions on how to set up your deliverability booster and skyrocket your business growth!