Improve Your Email Deliverability With an Email Spam Checker

It’s brutal when your emails are spam boxed. You could spend thousands of dollars and work countless hours on your email marketing initiatives, but if your email messages are sent to spam, all the effort and resources you’ve invested go right down the drain.

That’s why email marketers are gung-ho about protecting their sender reputation by avoiding spam trigger words and using spam email checkers.

When your sender reputation is damaged, your email deliverability suffers, and everything goes downhill from there.

To avoid experiencing email marketing Armageddon, you need to learn about email spam checkers and the crucial role they play in improving your email marketing campaigns.

Overview: What’s an email spam checker?

An email spam tester is a service or software program that lets you run your emails through spam filters to detect issues, such as inappropriate content, a blacklisted email domain or IP address, and other elements that can get your emails tagged as spam.

Email spam score checkers flag your email content issues, give you a spam score, and show you specific email elements you need to tweak so your emails don’t end up in the spam folder.

Each email that goes to spam can lower your sender score and harm your sender reputation. That’s why spam tests are crucial.

How to use a spam email checker

In this guide, we’ll focus on three steps for checking your emails for spam elements and content using email software SendPulse.

Step 1: Run your email campaign through the spam checker

After creating your email campaign by adding email information, content, and parameters, click the “Get recommendations” link under the Preview and Send tab in SendPulse.

Check your email campaigns for spam elements and get recommendations to improve your email deliverability Image source: Author

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Source: SendPulse software

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The tool analyzes your email and flags any element or content that might lead to email services and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to tag your campaign as spam.

Step 2: Go through the recommendations

Once you click the “Get recommendations” option, you’ll see a popup showing the specific elements and content that could get flagged as spam and some tips on how to fix them.

Take note of your email campaigns’ specific issues and recommendations to help improve deliverability. Image source: Author

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The four general categories that SendPulse checks are your subject lines, sender data, preheaders, and email body.

Step 3: Apply the recommended fixes and send

Follow the email spam test recommendations to fix your email issues. Some fixes are easy to pull off. In some cases, you just need to remove email stop words, add alt attributes to your images, reduce the number of capital letters in your content, etc.

Other recommendations are a bit more technical. For example, adjusting your authentication parameters can be quite tricky if you are a total beginner at email marketing.

Take the time to polish your email marketing campaigns. Don’t slack off. Send several test emails if you have to. Email marketing alone can do wonders for your business if you take the time to make it work.

Still, when you see the recommendations of the spam tester tool, be sure to act on them. Don’t take the recommendations lightly.

3 tips for improving email deliverability

Follow these email marketing best practices to make sure your emails reach your recipients’ inboxes.

1. Implement a double opt-in method

Use double opt-ins to be sure you have your contacts’ consent to receiving your emails. People who expect your emails are far less likely to report your messages as spam, reducing your chances of getting added to an email blacklist.

A double opt-in method can also prevent bots from getting added to your email list, helping you avoid getting caught in spam traps that could ruin your sender reputation.

Some tips to optimize your double opt-in process:

• Offer one-click confirmation: Simplify the double opt-in process by offering a confirmation link that your prospects can easily click to confirm their subscription. This encourages subscribers to sign up instead of driving them away due to an extra step.
• Provide a brief explanation of double opt-ins: Give a short reason why you’re asking for a sign-up confirmation. Doing so makes sure your potential subscribers understand the process and why it’s required, increasing the likelihood they’ll complete the sign-up process.

2. Keep your email list clean

Manage your email list to keep it clean and free from potential spam traps, incorrect email addresses that cause your messages to bounce, and contacts you no longer engage with who might report your emails as spam.

Here are some tips for cleaning your email list:

• Check the validity of your contacts’ email addresses: Use spam email address checker tools to assess the validity of the emails in your list. This helps you avoid sending emails to spam trap email addresses and getting blacklisted. It also detects email ad typos from legitimate subscribers and reduces email bounces.
• Remove unsubscribed contacts from your list: Remove the email addresses of those who unsubscribed from your list. They’re likely to tag you as spam if you continue sending them emails. Not only will it make them feel ignored, but it also ruins their experience with your brand, motivating them to share the experience within their network. Removing them also helps you avoid violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation data privacy rules.

3. Allow subscribers to manage preferences

Give subscribers more control over how often they want to receive your emails. This helps improve their experience with your marketing campaigns and, in turn, your brand. It lowers the chances of them flagging your emails as spam, increasing your email deliverability rate, and reducing email bounces.

The following are some tips on how to allow subscribers to manage their email preferences:

• Let subscribers update their information: Include a link in your email footer or other parts of the email body that lets subscribers change their info, such as the address they use to receive your emails. Doing so helps you address your contacts’ preferences and increase subscriber satisfaction.
• Set up a preference center: Provide a link to your preference center that offers subscription options. This allows your subscribers to choose how often they’ll receive your emails, opt out of specific email categories, or pause emails for a while. This email marketing example from outdoor gear company REI is worth looking into.

Provide subscribers with an email preference center to control the frequency and type of email content they want to receive. Image source: Author

Reach more inboxes by avoiding spam triggers

Increase the likelihood of your emails landing in your subscribers’ inboxes by using email deliverability test tools and follow the email marketing tips covered in this guide.

There is so much to be gained from email marketing. You can generate truckloads of sales, increase audience engagement, and even nurture customer relationships. The last thing you want is to have all your email marketing initiatives undermined because all your emails are going to spam.