Every day, billions of spam emails are sent, cluttering inboxes and often, leading to significant financial losses. Effective spam filters are vital for protecting users, but these same filters can sometimes be overzealous, mistakenly flagging legitimate marketing emails as spam.
Getting your emails to land in your clients' inboxes rather than wandering into the abyss of the spam folder is key for keeping your patient communication on track.
By understanding how spam filters work and adjusting how you send emails through Peptalkr, you can improve your chances of hitting those inboxes right on target.
In this guide, we'll walk through several checkpoints to ensure your emails are set up for success, avoiding common pitfalls that lead to them being marked as spam.
What triggers spam filters?
Modern spam filters use sophisticated algorithms based on user engagement and past interactions with your emails. Factors that may influence these include:
Positive Signals: Frequent opening of emails, replies, adding the sender to address books, or moving emails from the junk folder to the inbox.
Negative Signals: Emails being moved to junk, deleted without opening, or not being interacted with at all.
Your spam filter checklist
One: Have you verified your sending domain(s) with Peptalkr?
This is crucial if you are sending email from your own domain. You must add special DNS records we supplied to you in order to permit Peptalkr to send emails on your behalf for all domains you plan on sending email from.
If you haven't done this yet - follow the steps in this article.
If you have - move on to step two.
Two: Have you configured your emails to use your verified sending domain?
Every time you create a new email, whether it be a Campaign, Automation or Transactional email - you'll be asked to choose a 'Sender'. Ensure you have selected one of your verified sending domains in each and every email you send.
Go ahead and check each of your emails and ensure you are selecting a verified domain from the dropdown pictured below:
If you are using the Peptalkr domain to send email, we recommend changing to your own domain. While you can use our domain, it is shared among many users - so it's best you use your own domain for maximum control over your email deliverability.
Three: Are you emailing people who have opted in?
We strongly recommend you only email people who have subscribed. We do not recommend contacting people who have not had any appointments in years, not do we recommend added people to any of your marketing lists without their consent.
Four: Are your emails targeted?
We rarely suggest emailing your entire database at once. Rather than sending the same email to your entire list, try segmenting your list and targeting the campaign to those who you know are going to be interested.
By doing so, you’ll increase the number of recipients opening your campaigns and decrease the number of people deleting them, sending positive signals to email providers about the validity of your campaigns.
Instead, we suggest:
Segmenting your database into smaller groups based on things such as the practitioner they see, the appointments they attend etc.
Craft emails for your segments - for example, if you want to send an email about women's health - try sending this just to women, or patients of a practitioner who specialises in women's health.
Send infrequent marketing emails - the more often you email a person, the more likely they will become tired of the emails. Try sending a wider variety of emails, to smaller segments.
Five: Are your subject lines well written?
The subject line is your very first impression when it comes to email. Make your subject lines descriptive, useful and targeted to ensure you capture attention.
Try inserting personalisation into the subject line - this is a proven way of connecting with your recipient and avoiding being marked as spam.
Six: Have you set a valid reply-to email address?
If you are sending your emails from a non-existent email address - you should always set a valid reply-to email so that replies have somewhere to go. If you do receive replies, this sends a positive signal that your emails are real and that people care enough about them to reply.
Seven: Are you sending high quality content?
Emails that are poorly written, look bad or contain spammy-looking content might leave a bad impression. Ensure you are delivering quality content that isn't too long, has proper grammar/spelling and is structured nicely for fast reading.
✅ Remember - avoiding spam filters are a combination of using the right technology, the right content and the right targeting techniques. Keep all of this in mind and you should be on your way to the inbox.