Overview
Using tips from multiple websites including OptinMonster, Inside Real Estate has gathered tips and tricks that you can use to make your emails more deliverable. These are items that you can control when you are building out emails and email lists to improve your deliverability rate. Some of these items described will take some time to have an effect, but the sooner you change your email practices the more robust your lead and sphere engagement will be!
Please Note: It’s strongly recommended that IRE manages your DNS to avoid emails from going to spam! Have questions? Please reach out to the IRE support team for assistance!
Why Emails Go to Spam
There are a number of reasons why an email sent from BoldTrail might land in the spam folder:
Emailing targeted content without permission. We recommend sending targeted content (such as newsletters and marketing emails) only to users who have consented to recieve it. For example, purchasing a list of email addresses or manually adding leads to the CRM to send marketing emails without permission may result in more negative engagement than positive. Contacts will likely unsubscribe, mark those emails spam and block the sender.
A high amount of unsubscribes and emails sent to spam will negatively impact email deliverability, as email providers can use this data to automatically send emails from that address to the spam folder. Due to this, we recommend ensuring that new contacts register on the website, as they will be able to provide direct consent to recieve marketing content.
User-configured email inbox settings. Some contacts may have set up specific filters or settings to mark certain types of emails as spam, which is unfortunately outside of our control.
Low engagement rates. Email providers regularly review the rate at which emails are opened and how many are deleted without being opened as a factor in the way they filter spam content. Emails with low open rates and read rates are at higher risk of being flagged as spam.
Low inbox usage. Another factor that email providers take into account is the ratio of active to inactive email accounts. An inactive email account is one that has not been used for a very long time, or is rarely used. If you regularly email a large number of contacts who have not been opening your emails, that may be a red flag to spam filters. To combat this, we recommend removing any currently running Smart Campaigns from users who have not engaged with your email content in a significant period of time.
Misleading or confusing subject lines. The CAN-SPAM Act states that it is against the law to intentionally mislead someone with your subject line in order to provoke an emotional response, therefore coercing them into opening and viewing the email.
Using spam trigger words. Many spam filters are triggered by including specific words in the subject line, or in the body of your email. There are a few resources available to combat this:
How to Avoid the Spam Folder contains a list of guidelines to prevent your emails from going to spam, including a full list of common spam filter trigger words. We recommend reviewing these words and updating your emails accordingly to either remove them, or adjust the context in which they were written.
INotSpam is a free tool that scores your emails for deliverability and to check if they’re likely to trigger spam filters.
Not using a custom domain for your email address. A generic email address is a free email address that is created on email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, ect. These would look similar to the following:
Domain email addresses will display a personalized domain name to that includes the business or company domain, and would look similar to the below:
In order to ensure the deliverability of your emails, it's recommended to use email addresses that are tied to a custom domain.
Additionally, as of February 2024, all bulk senders using Gmail must authenticate their emails to allow for easy un-subscription, and stay under a reported spam threshold. To help make this easier, if you are using a generic email address, BoldTrail will automatically assign you verified relay email address.
Your emails include poor HTML formatting. Emails with broken HTML formatting are characteristic of high volume email spammers. Due to this, if your email contains messy or nonfunctional HTML code, there is a higher chance it will end up in the spam folder. To prevent this:
Use a maximum width of 600-800 pixels.
Keep your HTML code as simple and clean as possible. If you’d like to showcase your brand with a lot of customization, the best place to do so is by customizing your website and using emails to direct your contacts there. This way, you avoid over-complicating your HTML code with a large amount of graphics and banners.
Keep your image-to-text ratio low. Images can take awhile to load, and including too many of them without corresponding text can also trigger the spam filter. Additionally, a large amount of images may not load for some users, and they may mark the email as spam if they recieve an email with too many broken image placeholders.
Optimize your images for email by compressing them first. This can be done in most image editing programs.
Avoid obscure fonts. Not all fonts are standardized, and using a non-standard font may result in garbled or unreadable text.
Tips, Tricks & Helpful 3rd Party Tools
If IRE Manages Your DNS - Recommended
The IRE Implementation team sets up a few important records - No action needed from you!
SPF
DMARC
DKIM - The DKIM record is specific to the platform / system you use to send email. The DKIM record we generate will cover emails sent from your BoldTrail platform.
IMPORTANT: If you are sending emails from another system than BoldTrail, such as Google or Outlook, you will need to follow your provider’s instructions to generate this separate DKIM record.
It is important that you provide this record to our teams so we can set it up in your DNS Zone.
How to Stop Email From Going to Spam
Ask your subscribers to whitelist your emails.
If a particular contact has reported that your emails are ending up in spam or other unwanted folders, you can recommend that they whitelist your emails.
Tell your Gmail users to "drag" your emails from other tabs to their Primary inbox. Depending on the context of the email, Google will automatically sort emails into inbox categories:
Primary: Emails from people you know and messages that don’t appear in other tabs.
Social: Messages from social networks and media-sharing sites.
Promotions: Deals, offers, and other promotional emails.
Updates: Automated confirmations, notifications, statements, and reminders that may not need immediate attention.
Forums: Messages from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists.
If your customers are not recieving your emails, have them check each of these folders. They will need to click and drag to move your emails into the main Inbox, which will over time "train" the inbox to start sending your emails to the correct location.
Check your email domain.
It's strongly recommended to use an email address that is tied to a custom domain. Example: nick@mybrokerage.com
Email addresses using a custom domain not only help prevent issues with spam but also allow you to create specific email branding. Spam issues are more likely to occur when using a public email address.
Additionally, as of February 2024, all bulk senders using Gmail must authenticate their emails to allow for easy un-subscription, and stay under a reported spam threshold. To help make this easier, if you are using a generic public email address, BoldTrail will automatically assign you verified relay email address.
Check your DNS records for your custom domain.
Please Note: You must have a custom email to take advantage of this step.
If you're hosting your own DNS for your email address, you'll want to add an SPF record and include the following:
include: sendgrid.net
If you are the owner of a BoldTrail account, it is highly recommended to connect a custom email that matches the top level domain.
If you are an Agent, we strongly recommend connecting a vanity domain or a custom email for use within your BoldTrail account.
Set up a DKIM Record.
Please Note: You must have a custom email to take advantage of this step.
To set up DKIM records, reach out to the InsideRE Support team for assistance!
The process for this varies depending on the service powering your email. We recommend reaching out to your email service provider if any assistance is required!
DMARC Record
Add the following DMARC values via a TXT type to your DNS records:
NAME = _dmarc | Value = "v=DMARC1; p=none;"
SPF Records
When you send an e-mail from the system, it's important that your DNS settings allow the system to send emails. You need to have an SPF TXT record -- you may already have one that looks like the following:
v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all"
Inside of the record, you'll need to ensure it has include:sendgrid.net.
example: "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:sendgrid.net ~all"
There is no need to list each of your IP addresses if you add include:sendgrid.net to your SPF, as all IP addresses will automatically be included.
It's important to note that the use of link shorteners like Bitly, TinyURL, or others may cause outbound emails to be marked as spam. This is not specific to BoldTrail, but is common with most email providers. We strongly suggest using full URLs for links outside the Boldtrail platform.
Spam Filter Testing and Spam Checkers
Still worried that your emails might go to spam? If you follow all of the above tips, and you’re still having a problem with emails getting sent to spam, here are some spam checkers that you can use to test your emails for issues.
Litmus
Litmus is a suite of email optimization tools that includes a spam checker. Here’s how it helps you keep emails going to spam:
Scans your emails by all the major spam filters before sending, to make sure that they pass.
Checks your reputation by looking at any domain names used in your email, and checking them against known blacklists. (If any of them could affect your delivery, you’ll get a notification.)
Verifies that your email authentication, such as DKIM, DomainKeys, SenderID, and Sender Policy Framework, is set up properly.
Gives you a spam score, which advises you on why you got that score and how to improve it.
Mail-Tester
Mail-Tester is a free spam checking tool that gives you an easy-to-understand score out of 10 on a scale of spammyness. You’ll have to check each email manually, but it checks to see if you’re blacklisted, DKIM, and the quality of your message, as well as doing a SpamAssassin check.
IsNotSpam.com
IsNotSpam.com is a free spam checker that you can try if you don’t have the budget for Litmus.
You’ll have to check each mail manually, and it doesn’t have a comprehensive testing capability, but it will check your Sender Policy Framework, SenderID, and DKIM to make sure they are set up properly, and it will do a SpamAssassin check to score your email content.
Have more questions? Please reach out to Customer Support via the blue chat bubble to the right or by emailing support@insiderealestate.com!