Avoid Emails Being Marked as Spam

Introduction

Using the full feature set provided with the Chime product will ultimately include sending out large amounts of emails to your lead database. These can be property alerts, drip campaign emails, etc.

It is important to note that all mass emails, property alerts, and drip campaign emails will be sent from the "firstname.lastname@chime.me" email address assigned to each account created with Chime.  Also, although Chime has a reputation for not being marked as spam by the majority of recipients, each email service is different and there are some important things to keep in mind that you can help control. 

First of all, it is important to note that having emails marked as spam is very common in email marketing. Many email service providers have different filtering criteria to eventually consider emails as spam. Although the set criteria is reasonable, there will always be flaws in which emails are flagged as spam incorrectly. We’ve all been there. . . waiting on that important email only to discover it in the spam folder days later!

The general reasons for emails to be marked as spam are listed below:

• A certain amount of recipients mark your emails as spam
• Your emails have a low open rate
• You used spam trigger words in the email subject or body (such as "amazing," "free," "promise you," etc.)
• Too many responses to the sending email address have bounced
• There is no physical address in your email body
• HTML emails do not follow many email marketing best practices. They might include some branding elements that make the emails more likely to be marked as spam.

General Suggestions

1. Have leads add you as a contact to ensure your emails go through to their inbox
2. Have leads check their Spam folder and if they see your email encourage them to indicate that it is "Not Spam." This will help email providers recognize the sending email address as one not associated with spam.
3. Have leads add your _________@chime.me email address as a contact or “Safe Sender.” This will also improve the overall deliverability of your emails to your leads and will largely prevent your emails from going to their spam folders. This will also include an enhanced email reputation as a whole. This is how it is done in Gmail settings:
4. Regularly "prune" and remove email addresses that do not respond to you. They may not be responding because they have marked your emails as spam which triggers the spam filters with certain email providers. Keep in mind that many email providers (like Google) look at unopened rates. So, if you keep sending emails to leads that do not have any interest or do not open your emails, then the email provider will automatically begin to classify your emails as spam.
5. Minimize the number of emails you send at one time. If you can break up bulk emails into several rounds this may allow more emails to go through. We recommend only sending 1-3 automated emails per week to a lead (this includes property alerts, snapshots, and market reports).
6. If you are sending too many blast emails out and are not getting engagement with those emails, it can also cause your email address to be marked as spam.
7. Please make sure your emails are not considered "spammy." There are free tools online that you can use to check whether or not your emails contain common "spam words."
8. In general, if leads seldom open or reply to your emails or they report them as spam, your email reputation will decline. If your email reputation declines enough, your email address can be marked as spam. You will want to make sure you are (a) sending good quality/engaging emails, (b) at the recommended frequency (see above), and (c) make sure to remove people from your distribution list who are not opening your emails. 

Our commitment at Chime

• We monitor our domain and IP reputation every day and our performance is guaranteed by Amazon. Our reputation is listed as good by Amazon so our IP is not blacklisted.
• We send tens of millions of emails for our customers every day and plan to continue to do so as effectively as possible.
• We have a solid reputation associated with our domain/service and will seek to maintain and always improve this reputation
• We will continue to run our service in compliance with ESPs and will be sure to follow their suggestions of separating IP, sending frequency, etc.

Additional Information

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, consider reviewing this resource published on Quora: What techniques can I use to prevent emails sent from my web site from being marked as spam and increase deliverability?.

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding this topic or any others, please reach out to our Support Team via email at <support@chimeinc.com> or by phone at 1 (855) 981-7557.