: Reduce likelihood of Mailchimp email campaign going to Spam The company I work for sends a marketing email at least one time per week using Mailchimp's email service. All of our subscribers
The company I work for sends a marketing email at least one time per week using Mailchimp's email service. All of our subscribers are opt-in active customers and our emails are not spammy. There is an above average text to image ratio, and copy does not contain 'spammy' words.
However, we've recently started noticing that our emails are being filters to spam significantly more often.
According to Mailchimp, by using their internal authentication our campaigns will pass SenderID, SPF, DomainKeys, and DKIM checks.
What else can I do to reduce the likelihood of our emails going to peoples spam folder, and Gmails promotions tab?
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From: =?utf-8?Q?The=20Bouq=27aneers?= <service@thebouqs.com>
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To: =?utf-8?Q?=3C=3C=20Test=20First=20Name=20=3E=3E?= <theodore.boulard@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:39:14 +0000
Message-ID: <e9c7499aeda15720c6e28fa94.20140324193906@mail138.us4.mcsv.net>
X-Mailer: MailChimp Mailer - **CIDa9958ea379**
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Sender: "The Bouq'aneers" <service=thebouqs.com@mail138.us4.mcsv.net>
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Isnotspam.com Test Results
SPF Check : pass
Sender-ID Check : pass
DomainKeys Check : neutral
DKIM Check : pass
SpamAssassin Check : ham (non-spam)
Details:
HELO hostname: mail94.us2.mcsv.net
Source IP: 173.231.139.94
mail-from: service@thebouqs.com
Anonymous To: ins-i5vpjpax@isnotspam.com
SPF check details:
Result: pass
ID(s) verified: smtp.mail=service@thebouqs.com
DNS record(s):
thebouqs.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all"
thebouqs.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.google.com ~all"
Sender-ID check details:
Result: pass
ID(s) verified: smtp.mail=service@thebouqs.com
DNS record(s):
thebouqs.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all"
thebouqs.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.google.com ~all"
DomainKeys check details:
Result: neutral (message not signed)
ID(s) verified: header.From=service@thebouqs.com
Selector=
domain=
DomainKeys DNS Record=
DKIM check details:
Result: pass
ID(s) verified: header.From=service@thebouqs.com
Selector=k1
domain=mail94.us2.mcsv.net
DomainKeys DNS Record=k1._domainkey.mail94.us2.mcsv.net
SpamAssassin check details:
SpamAssassin v3.3.1 (2010-03-19)
Result: ham (non-spam) (0-1.9points, 10.0 required)
pts rule name description
-0.0 RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE RBL: Sender listed at www.dnswl.org/, no
trust
[173.231.139.94 listed in list.dnswl.org]
-0.0 RCVD_IN_IADB_UT_CPR_MAT RBL: IADB: Sends no material under Utah's
CPR
[173.231.139.94 listed in iadb.isipp.com]
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-0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record
-0.4 RP_MATCHES_RCVD Envelope sender domain matches handover relay domain
1.0 DK_SIGNED DK_SIGNED
0.1 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
0.0 BAYES_50 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 40 to 60%
[score: 0.5000]
0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily
valid
-0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature
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More posts by @Cooney921
3 Comments
Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best
IMHO your best bet is really to avoid using mailchimp for opted-in lists - at least 50% of the email I get from them is spam (the messages are also generally illegal under UK law), so I would wager that a large number of services proactively dump all mailchimp email into spam folders. A lot of other people seem to feel the same way, here's a few examples:
lists.debian.org/debian-isp/2016/08/msg00001.html www.techie7.com/threads/72825/ http://otakunozoku.com/block-that-mailchimp-spam/ www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/614184-mailchimp-haven-spammers-discuss.html http://bitmonger.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/avoid-wretched-spammers-at-mailchimp.html forum.spamcop.net/topic/16829-internetwide-block-for-spamchimp/
There is one service that I actually want emails from who use mail chimp - if not for that, I'd be auto-marking all mailchimp emails as spam. I have extensive experience reporting abuse to mailchimp, they do not act on it promptly (I have never received a response in less than a few hours, and the response is never 'that account has been deactivated until they prove they are using an opt in list as our T&Cs require' - it is always 'we will investigate').
If, as you say, you're running on entirely opt-in (where the user has actively opted in, directly to your company, to receive marketing from your company) lists then your best bet may be a self hosted solution. Depending on your volumes, this may be more expensive than mailchimp.
Alternatively, according to a survey done last year by Capterra, MailChimp alternative Constant Contact had much greater deliverability than MailChimp:
Of our survey participants, the primary reason that marketers
preferred Constant Contact when they had used both systems was because
they saw greater email deliverability with Constant Contact.
Anecdotally I don't believe I've ever received a single spam from Constant Contact, so that gels with the survey results.
There are many things that we can't say for sure because the spam world and spam filters are a never ending battle and constantly adding new rules and new ways to avoid rules. But a few things on those headers have caused problems on some clients.
X-Apparently-To
Many people has rules stating that if they are not a clear recipient addressed on the to field the mail should be discarded.
Return-Path
Although technically correct, this header has bad elements, for instance, it includes the word bounce, which some filters may use to redirect or prevent the mail to reach the inbox. That header indicates a real bounce address from your company, but any problem parsing it makes the email a message without return-path, which is basic for not being considered spam.
Subject and encoding of the message
You have non standard characters on the subject, not completely unseen, but not the most standard way, plus the encoding of the mail seems wrong, to me it looks that the system is relying on the default behaviour of clients to assume a default of utf-8. If you can control that, ensure that you set the content-type, either iso-8859-1 or utf-8 whichever is right for you.
In any case, nothing seems to be a show stopper, so most probably the problem is related to specific rules that you clients have. If you can run a small study with some of your users to find out their rules and email clients that may help to improve the situation.
To be honest with you I would like to think that Mail Chimp will have spf records and domain keys etc all sorted out and generally keeping the reputation of their infrastructure clean.
Hence I would imagine this will be issues with your content and interactions from your recipients.
A couple of things I have noticed straight off.
It looks quite image heavy there are spam rules regarding the balance of images to text.
My understanding is that spam filters cant check what is on an image hence is one preferred route for spammers to use. You can apparently fill the images alt text with a couple of relevant paragraphs to circumvent this. But make sure you dot just use the same paragraphs lots as this will look like duplicate content.
In addition to this there are a bunch of online tools that can check for spammy characteristics of your message. Such as -
www.emailspamtest.com/ http://isnotspam.com/
Also an issue we had was people who no longer wanted our emails just junked us. This is really damaging for your reputation its much more preferable that they unsubscribe. We moved our opt-out link to the top of our email and made it prominent rather than in the footer text and we belie that this helped.
Also the frequency and relevancy of your email messages to your users will also affect the number of times you are junked.
Deliverability will always remain somewhat of a dark art though - good luck!
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