Sometimes marked as spam

Dan

I have read lots of posts on spam and how typically it out of sendy's control, which I understand. I am hoping for some help though.

I created a simple campaign called test, the contents of the message are "this is a test message".
I then use the "Test send this newsletter" button to send the newsletter to my email address.

• This works great shows up in my inbox seconds later.
  Now I select my "test_list" from the lists which just contains the same email I just sent to via the "Test send this newsletter" button and click the "Send newsletter now!".

• Once the cronjob runs the campaign goes from pending to sent as expected.

• But sadly the email shows up in by inbox.

I am super confused how this could be happening. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advanced,
Dan

Ben

But sadly the email shows up in by inbox.

Do you mean email shows up in your spam folder?

Both emails sent via 'Test send this newsletter' and 'cron job' uses the exact same code. I've never encountered this and am puzzled as well.

Ben

Can you do the same thing but this time, use my email address ben at sendy.co?

Thanks.

Ben

Dan

Hello Ben,
Sorry for the delay in response. I just performed the test.

And Yes I did mean spam folder.

You should have received two emails from freeapps at zappd.us.

Please let me know what you think. Also I can send you the login info if needed.

Thank you for your help,
Dan

Ben

Thanks @Dan,

I received both emails. One went to my inbox and one went to spam.

The difference between these two emails is that one has a 1 x 1 pixel tracking image:

and the other does not:

The one with the 1 x 1 pixel tracking image went to spam.

ISPs uses spam filters with varying complexities. These spam filters have a set of rules to detect if a message is spam. I looked at your message content and it only say "This is the content of our test Campaign. HTML", followed by the tracking code. I suspect the spam filter thinks this is a characteristic of a spam email and therefore sent it to spam.

Emails with the tracking image don't automatically gets sent to spam, I've sent hundreds of thousands of emails (with tracking images of course) and they don't all go to spam. The email content in my test emails usually contains at least a few paragraphs, so I guess the spam filter don't think it is spam. Also, if emails with tracking images automatically goes to spam there will be a lot of complains in this forum and no email marketing platforms will be able to track opens or other data.

So I'm deducing it's the combination of the one liner content coupled with the tracking image that causes it to be sent to spam.

Also it's good to keep in mind there are many other variables how spam filters decide to send your emails to spam, like the copy, number of exclamation marks and caps, even the type of color used (whether they're primary colors of red and blue) and more which can be very hard to pinpoint.

Can you try sending a campaign with more content or paragraphs in the message to see if it gets to spam?

Thanks.

Ben

Dan

Hello Ben,

Thank you for this clarification and explanation. I went ahead and sent the email with lots of content but its still getting sent to spam.

Any suggestions? I am going to do some research to see make sure I have everything setup properly.

Thanks,
Dan

Ben

Hi Dan,

Are you receiving your emails from a Gmail / Google Apps email address?

Thanks.

Ben

Ben

Can you also try including an 'unsubscribe' link in your email? See bulk senders guidelines by Google https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81126

Dan

Oh yeah. I planned on doing that in production but didn't even think about it for testing. Still went to spam though.

Thank you for your help.

Ben

You're welcome @Dan. I just checked my spam folder and saw that you've sent some emails over. I received 3 emails, whether they are tests or not, all of them went to spam.

You may also want to try researching (or posting your question) on Amazon SES's forum.

I hope you can find something in your research.

Thanks.

Ben

Dan

It definitely seems to be an issue with having images in the email.

I am looking through the Amazon SES forums now. I will post my solution, assuming I find one!

Thanks,
Dan

Dan

I just wanted to jump back here with an update. I was not to find much information on this issue. but it seems like it might be that it takes a week of sending email before gmail trusts a new domain.

I am not sure this is just my theory as it has been a week since I started and am no longer getting sent to spam.

I hope this gives someone hope.

Ben

Thanks @Dan, hope this information will help someone.