Summary & Important notes

First, the data on MailReach is accurate and 100% reliable. Keep reading, it will make sense for you.
If you follow the steps below correctly, you should be able to fix your deliverability (and bad spam test score) in the upcoming minutes.
MailReach raises your sender reputation (which is the hardest part of the deliverability job), but it's not the only factor to land in inbox. There's also your email content and sending setup that play BIG roles on inbox placement. You can have a perfect sender reputation and still land 100% in spam because of your email content and / or your sending setup. Your own emails and the way you send them are different from MailReach emails: this explains everything.
If you're landing in spam while having a high Reputation Score, it simply means that there's something spammy with your email content and / or your sending setup (links, tracking, words, images, signature, sending IP, etc.), even if you don't suspect it.
The solution: use our Spam Checker to identify what makes you land in spam and make the necessary changes until landing back in the main inbox.
Relax and follow the steps below.
Spoiler: in 80% of cases, the elements causing spam are links in your email and tracking (no custom tracking domain).

Step 1 : Run a first spam test using MailReach Spam Checker by following the instructions below.

⚠️ You have to run the spam test under the same sending conditions as when you discovered that you were landing in spam. This is very important, as different sending conditions can produce completely different results.

Instructions

Launch a first spam test that matches these conditions :

Use your own email content
Send your email under the same conditions as when sending your real campaigns to avoid any bias

Check your result

Don't check where your email lands on inboxes you don't target, that's irrelevant and gives a biased result. If you only send emails to professional inboxes, ignore the personal inboxes and vice versa. Google & Microsoft can put you in spam just because of "irrelevant targeting".

1. If you land mostly in inbox on the inboxes you target

This means that you don't have a spam problem OR that you have carried out a spam test under different conditions from those in which you say you always land in spam.

2. If you land mostly in spam on the inboxes you target

This confirms the fact you're landing in spam because of your content and/or sending setup. It's your reference spam test. Keep it on the side and follow the next steps.

Step 2 : Run a second spam test: the '100% innocent email'.

Now, we're going to test if the cause of spam is your email content or not.

To do that, we need to run a test with an email content that can't be spammy at all. A '100% innocent email'. If you land in inbox with this test => the problem is your email content (links, tracking domain, signature, risky / spam words, images).

Run the following spam test :

Send an email to our spam test under ALL these conditions, that's crucial :

Only one or two 100% innocent professional sentences. Example: Hi, I hope you're doing well. I'd like to know if you'd be available for a call about ...
Put a non spammy subject line, like "introduction", "quick intro", "news since last time", "our meeting", "next event", "invitation". Something natural and professional in small caps, no punctuation.
Plain text : no images, no formatting. Nothing but text, make sure of that.
Zero email signature: no website, no phone number, no job title, no email address, no physical address. Nothing.
Zero links / no URLs : even the unsubscribe link, even in the signature. ZERO link. Not one.
Zero first name. We want to avoid saying "Hi Teresa" to the 30 mailboxes of our Spam Test as they're not named Teresa.
No tracking : the tracking domain is one of the main causes of content related spam. Tracking is automatically added by your outreach tool : make sure to disable the tracking of openings / clicks for this test.
Make sure you don't use any Chrome extension that helps you check if your recipient opened your email : that's tracking. Disable that, in 90% of cases, that's terrible for deliverability.

You get it, we want to run a spam test with the PUREST email possible to see if you can have very different results with an email like this one.

Check your result

1. You land mostly in inbox on the inboxes you target

Good news : you're getting closer to finding what causes the spam and fixing it.
It means the following : your content makes you land in spam : links, tracking domain, risky / spam words, signature, images.
Go to Step 3 below : identify what is or what are the elements that cause spam.

2. You still land mostly in spam on the inboxes you target

This scenario is unlikely to happen if you have a high Reputation Score (85 and higher) and most of your warming emails land in inbox right now. This is why you have to make sure your spam test has been done under the conditions listed above.
As a bad tracking domain is a major cause of content related spam, are you 100% sure there's no tracking in your email? It's added by default by your campaign sending tool. If you're not sure, run the spam test again and make sure to disable the tracking of openings / clicks in your email automation tool.
Check the Content Analysis tab of your spam test result, MailReach should detect 0 links and no tracking pixel. If MailReach detects a link and/or tracking pixel, it means that you haven't removed everything to run a proper '100% innocent spam test'.
Make sure you have sent a '100% innocent email' and run the spam test again if needed. Ideally you should get a better spam score.

If you're 100% sure to have sent a real 100% innocent email and are still landing mostly in spam :

At that point, the spam cause can only be one or several of the following things :

A bad sending IP (blacklisted or not) : you need to check with your provider to have a different sending IP and see if your result is different.
A weird / exotic sending set up : custom SMTPs, self hosted servers or anything close to this.
You're doing B2C, you target personal inboxes and have a bad sender reputation with personal inboxes : as MailReach works best for a B2B cold emailing use case, the email warming activity is more focused on professional inboxes. Even if we still have personal ones, the quantity is lower.

Step 3 : Run several different spam tests to identify and remove the element(s) that make you land in spam.

This step is for those who landed mostly in inbox after testing the '100% innocent email'.

Now the fun starts. We call that step the "crack the code game".

You've proven that with a 100% clean email you landed mostly in inbox.

Now you need to take the initial version of your email (the one that lands mostly in spam) and test different variations to reach your goal : find a version that lands mostly in inbox.

You're going to play with the Spam Checker by testing different modified versions until you get the best spam score.

Test these variations first (as they solve most content related spam. issues)

1. Your email content without tracking

If this version lands in inbox, the solution is :

Setup a custom tracking domain. Check that with your email sending software.
As your custom tracking domain, use the same domain of the sending address. If your sender is lucy@xyzcompany.com, use "xyzcompany.com" as a tracking domain.

2. Your email content without links / URLs (even in an email signature, etc)

If this version lands in inbox, the solution is :

Don't use these links, use different domains and make sure they don't cause spam too.
If that's your website, buy a new domain that forwards to your website.
In all cases, NEVER use shortened URLS / Bitly stuff, etc. It makes you land straight in spam.
Don't put an email address in your signature, especially if this address is different that the one sending the email. It's often a cause of spam.
In all cases, minimize the use of links / URLs, the fewer you put, the better.

3. Your email content with a different wording on sensible subjects.

Some topics can make you land in spam very easily. Especially in the following industries :

Money earning / growth / saving / investment / stocks / sales / "sell more"
Money games / casino stuff / betting
Loans / mortgage / credit / debts
Real estate
Security / cybersecurity
Health / diet / weight loss
Spirituality
Insurance
Sexuality (you know, penis enlargement and all that)
And many others

We can't identify all the spam words as it's now based on machine learning, it can be any word. For example : if a lot of people around the world report emails containing the word "XYZ" as spam => "XYZ" can become a spam word and if you use it in your email you could land in spam. Even if XYZ is the word "orange".

Long story short : you need to read your email and ask yourself "could this word be considered as a spam word?". If you have any doubt, try removing it and run a new spam test without it to see if it changes.

4. Your email content without images.

Images can make you land in spam, try a version without any image and see how it works.

If this version lands in inbox, the solution is simple :

Remove images
OR use different ones
OR host them elsewhere so the domain associated to the image is different.

5. And so on, you have to keep testing different versions until you find a version that suits your marketing needs and lands mostly in the inboxes of your targets.

Conclusion : you have the process to crack the code. It's now a matter of time.

Here are our final words :

If most of your warming emails are landing in inbox on MailReach ➡️ The spam cause is either your email content AND/OR your way of sending your email.
If that's a content issue, you can run different tests with modified versions of your initial email.
if that's a sending setup issue, you need to compare using a different sending tool and/or sending IP.

Updated on: 02/07/2024