What is a spam box and what can it mean for email marketing investments?

For the user, the spam box is practical in that it tries to separate out messages that are recognizably unwanted.

However, for those who work with email marketing, knowing what a spam box is and what it means is a watershed that determines the success or failure of a campaign, because it means more than a repository of unauthorized messages

First and foremost, working with mailing is not just the privilege of e-commerce, as companies and brands from a wide range of sectors have adopted this form of communication precisely to take advantage of what it can offer in terms of return.

Mass emails also mean a lot of spam. In fact, this is precisely why professionals monitor the spam box and know how much it can damage their business.

What is the spam box at email providers?

Email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, among others, both free and paid, reject spam for three basic reasons: cost, usability and security.

Spam generates costs for the providers, as they have to increase storage costs in datacenters to receive messages that are of no importance to the recipient and will probably never be read.

In terms of usability, providers have to try to separate legitimate messages from those that are of no interest to the recipient, since users are looking for a tool that is more than just an aggregator of email messages, but one that makes their day-to-day life more productive.

Finally, the issue of security involves filtering incoming emails, as they can be channels for scams such as phishing and ransomware.

Tip 1: Take care of the quality of your lists

First of all, beware that the way providers rate your behavior (whether you look like a spammer or not) is related to the way you handle the quality of your mailing lists.

Therefore, two main characteristics are evaluated: accuracy and engagement.

Accuracy refers to how correct the emails on the list are, i.e. whether there are many bounces (errors) on your list. Inaccuracies indicate a lack of care when collecting emails and possible spamming practices.

Secondly, engagement concerns the interest of recipients, because if they have actually requested your emails, they will promote a high engagement rate.

Collect emails the right way

Be careful when collecting email addresses, both in terms of quality and purpose.

Therefore, use mechanisms in your registration forms to prevent invalid, disposable and other emails.

Never collect emails without the express permission of the email account holder. Similarly, don’t use spamming practices, such as email harvesting, email scraping, buying email lists, among others, which are also illegal.

Have lists without invalid emails and spamtraps

A poor quality list leads to low deliverability rates (more emails in the spam box), low open rates (which we call low engagement), as well as poor click-through and conversion rates.

Remember that just 3% of bad emails are enough to stop sending and send the messages to the spam folder.

As a result, the ROI will be much lower than you expect. That’s if there is any kind of return, since the lists are blocked.

And how do you solve the problem of invalid emails on mailing lists? Email verification validates millions of emails simultaneously.

This protects the email marketer who, faced with an unverified list, is susceptible to being blocked by anti-spam filters or having their messages sent to the spam folder because of invalid emails.

Tip 2: create content that doesn’t look like spam

ISPs’ anti-spam filters are trained to catch suspicious messages.

That’s why you need to be aware of exactly what a spam box is and how it affects your content strategies, in order to prevent emails from suggesting something malicious to the recipient.

We’ve listed the elements most commonly observed by anti-spam filters when catching dubious emails:

• Subject lines: avoid capital letters and exaggerated words such as: now, free, run, etc.
• Sending volume: filters tend to block campaigns with incompatible email volumes. In other words, if you usually send 10,000 emails, don’t send 100,000. However, if this is the case, do what is known as a “warmup”: gradually increase the quantities. 10,000, 15,000, until you reach the desired volume.
• Layout: pay attention to the balance between images and text. It’s recommended that around 60% goes to text and 40% to images. Also, never send emails made up of 100% images. They won’t load automatically on your screen, and they’ll even get blocked.
• Visual programming: distribute the weight of the images so that they don’t exceed 500 kb throughout the email. This is a relatively safe limit to pass through anti-spam filters.
• Configure your authentications properly: SPF, DKIM and DMARC confirm to ISPs that emails are coming from your domain and are legitimate, and not from another source trying to impersonate you, preventing phishing spammers and ransomware from sending emails in your name

What is a spam box in content strategies: conclusion

The spam box is a repository for bad emails, which are kept separate from the rest. Providers’ anti-spam filters identify these risky emails and send them to the appropriate place.

Therefore, for professionals, spam represents a great loss, since spam lists are blocked and the messages do not reach the recipients’ inbox.

It is essential to adopt good practices to avoid problems with ISPs, such as setting up authentications, paying attention to the layout and subject line, protecting registration forms and carrying out the appropriate verification of emails on mailing lists.

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