Stop landing in Promotions with these tips

In this episode, Meredith and her husband break down why marketing emails end up in the promotions or spam folder—and how to fix it. They explain the four key factors that affect deliverability: technical setup, content, engagement, and list quality. Listeners learn practical steps like verifying domain records, avoiding “pretty” templates that trigger spam filters, and boosting engagement through genuine replies to improve inbox placement.

Download the Cheatsheet
https://seiq.meredithshusband.com/c/resources/email-deliverability-tips-d968e683-fcc9-418a-a3ce-5d4e3eda58d5

Timestamps
[0:00] Introduction
[0:24] Why emails land in spam or promotions folders
[1:10] Technical setup issues: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records
[3:18] Domain reputation and sender address red flags
[6:02] Content problems: pretty templates vs. plain text
[7:47] How design and links affect deliverability
[9:54] Engagement signals Gmail pays attention to
[11:23] Cleaning your list for better deliverability
[13:27] Double opt-ins and removing inactive subscribers
[16:02] Testing and warming up your sender reputation

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Transcript

[00:00:24] Meredith's husband: Alright, I think we should just jump right in. 

[00:00:26] Meredith: Uh, yeah, I think so. 

[00:00:27] Meredith's husband: All right. Today we're gonna talk about how to avoid the promotion or updates or spam box when you're sending out your marketing emails. 

[00:00:37] Meredith: Oh my gosh, yes, please. 

[00:00:39] Meredith's husband: And Meredith sounds like a million bucks today because she just got back from a shoot where she was 

[00:00:44] Meredith: talking to a lot of kids a lot of the time.

[00:00:47] Meredith: Three kids. I love them. Alright, 

[00:00:49] Meredith's husband: so this is not exactly related to SEO. 

[00:00:52] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:00:53] Meredith's husband: But I realize that this is kind of an issue for a lot of people. 

[00:00:57] Meredith: Okay. Yeah. Well, and I came 

[00:00:58] Meredith's husband: across it because it was an issue for me just recently in sending out, uh, email messages from my platform. Not, not necessarily from like MailChimp or one of those email marketing providers, but from my actual platform.

[00:01:10] Meredith's husband: I didn't expect this would be an issue, but it ended up being a. A significant issue. 

[00:01:15] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:01:16] Meredith's husband: And in mentioning that to some of the people and apologizing to the people who were supposed to receive those emails, they said, oh, if you figure it out, please let me know. 

[00:01:25] Meredith: Yeah. '

[00:01:25] Meredith's husband: cause they are doing this themselves.

[00:01:28] Meredith: Yeah. And then I told you the same thing. 

[00:01:31] Meredith's husband: The same thing. And I believe you are also on flow desks and that. Yes. That's a very popular one amongst photographers. 

[00:01:37] Meredith: Yes. And expensive. 

[00:01:40] Meredith's husband: Is it really? Yes. I, I don't know anything about, I think 

[00:01:42] Meredith: so. Yeah, I think it's expensive. 

[00:01:45] Meredith's husband: Okay. So there are a bunch of factors that go into this.

[00:01:48] Meredith: Okay. 

[00:01:48] Meredith's husband: I think, uh, people might be into the misconception that it's just something you do. Yeah. Or, or, and you, and it's fixed. That's, that's not the case. There's a bunch of different things. I've kind of listed all the ones that I know of. I thought everybody would know these things. But I don't know. That's just my bias.

[00:02:04] Meredith's husband: I'm coming from a world where everybody, you know, I don't do this stuff right. But I work closely enough with people who manage these things that I do know the factors. So evidently it's my own fault for expecting that people would know, but I'm going to go over these factors. Thank you. Okay. So they can be broken down into four categories, and at the end of this, I'm going to, I'm gonna.

[00:02:25] Meredith's husband: I'll make a checklist. Okay, great. Because there's bunch of, there's a bunch of things here. I'll, I'll put everything in a PDF checklist and link to it below. You can just download. 

[00:02:33] Meredith: Thank you. 

[00:02:34] Meredith's husband: Okay, so the four areas. The four categories are the setup. Yeah, your technic your technical setup, and then there's your content.

[00:02:42] Meredith's husband: Yeah. What you actually put in the email. Then there's the quality of your list. 

[00:02:47] Meredith: Okay. 

[00:02:47] Meredith's husband: And the engagement. Mm-hmm. Four different areas. 

[00:02:51] Meredith: What is the setup? 

[00:02:53] Meredith's husband: So I'm gonna go through these one, one at a time. 

[00:02:55] Meredith: Oh, thank you. 

[00:02:56] Meredith's husband: So when you set these up, you know when you sign up for something like MailChimp or. Uh, flow desk.

[00:03:03] Meredith's husband: There are some technical things that, that you, they suggest that you do. Oh, no, I don't. These things don't remember. These things are called, you have to set up what they call your SPF, your DKIM and your D-M-A-R-C records. 

[00:03:18] Meredith: Well, I have SPF on every two hours. 

[00:03:20] Meredith's husband: Yes, exactly. So what these are, I do these, these are things that you, they're.

[00:03:26] Meredith's husband: Domain name records, they're things that you go and you have to put in a little record wherever you register your domain. And what you are doing is you are essentially proving to Google that you own the domain. 

[00:03:38] Meredith: Got it. 

[00:03:39] Meredith's husband: This gets it. 'cause Lord knows people have tried to spam this system to no end. I can imagine.

[00:03:44] Meredith's husband: So. So just prove you need to prove to, in a lot of cases, Gmail, that it's coming from a legitimate domain. Fair enough. That's what that stuff is doing. So that's highly recommended. If you don't do that stuff, very good chance that your emails will end up probably in spam. They won't even make it to promotions.

[00:04:00] Meredith's husband: They'll go right to spam. Ah, yeah. Then also in the technical setup portion is your domain reputation. Okay. So again, when you sign up for something like flow desks, by default, your emails will probably be sent from something like Meredith Ziner at flow desks dot. You know, it'll give you some special sender 

[00:04:21] Meredith: right address, but it says it's under my name, people get it under my name.

[00:04:25] Meredith: Okay. 

[00:04:26] Meredith's husband: Otherwise, what it might do a lot of times is it will send from a special flow desk address. Yeah. And the reply to address is your email address. 

[00:04:36] Meredith: Right. 

[00:04:36] Meredith's husband: That's another, uh, kind of red flag. If you are, if you're sending from one address and the reply to address is a different email address. 

[00:04:46] Meredith: Yeah, 

[00:04:47] Meredith's husband: that's a, that's a not a major red flag, but that's a little bit of a red flag that like Gmail and other email providers will be looking for.

[00:04:55] Meredith's husband: Okay. So there is the, the, the reputation of your own domain name. Have you, assuming you have it set up to, so emails will go out from, you know, meredith@meredithcenterphotography.com. What? What is the sending reputation of that email address? Is it for example, a brand? If it's a brand new domain? Yeah. And sometimes people do this.

[00:05:18] Meredith's husband: That's going to be a red flag to Google 'cause it has no reputation. 

[00:05:22] Meredith: Right. 

[00:05:23] Meredith's husband: If you have tried previously to send out emails. And they all got marked as spam. Let's say, let's say you sent out a campaign to a bunch of people who didn't want it. They all mark it as, you know, unsubscribe or spam. That's a giant red flag.

[00:05:37] Meredith's husband: This is why you see sometimes if you, if you notice when you are getting emails from a, you know, somebody who's kind of spamming, they'll send from one address. Yeah. One domain, and then you'll get another. Email from the same sender, but they changed their domain names. Oh, they're trying to get around the bad reputation that they have built up.

[00:05:55] Meredith's husband: Yeah. Right. By sending out junk, 

[00:05:57] Meredith: naughty, naughty. 

[00:05:59] Meredith's husband: Right. Okay, so those are the technical 

[00:06:02] Meredith: Okay. 

[00:06:02] Meredith's husband: Issues. Now let's get into the content issues. Okay. Now, one of the reasons, one of the reasons that I think that people like flow desks is because, as you say. Pretty, it looks pretty, 

[00:06:14] Meredith: pretty. Okay. 

[00:06:15] Meredith's husband: So there is a trade off between deliverability and looking pretty.

[00:06:20] Meredith: That's not fair. 

[00:06:21] Meredith's husband: Yeah. Uh, now, I don't know. I'm not a flow desk user. But when you say look pretty. 

[00:06:27] Meredith: Like 

[00:06:27] Meredith's husband: their emails look pretty. What do you mean by that? 

[00:06:30] Meredith: I mean, I can customize it to have photos where I want links, where I want texts, where I want little design. Templates. 

[00:06:39] Meredith's husband: Templates. Templates. So it sounds like float desks is, is just like most other.

[00:06:44] Meredith's husband: Email marketing providers like MailChimp and I use mailer light. You can add, you add in images, they have templates, but the more of that that you do, the less your email looks like a legitimate email and more like a newsletter. And it increases the chances that it's going to go to promotions. Huh. So for example, if you have.

[00:07:07] Meredith's husband: What we would call a plain text email. 

[00:07:10] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:07:10] Meredith's husband: Like you send out an email to somebody and usually it's just text, right? Yeah. That's very unlikely to be sent to anybody's promotions folder. Right? Or updates. That's because it's just plain text. Now, when you start to put in images and buttons, it increases the odds that it's going to be caught into or placed in a promotions folder if you start adding like columns and really format it like a newsletter.

[00:07:34] Meredith's husband: Mm-hmm. That's even more so like that's almost guaranteed that not that's what we would call an HTML email. Mm-hmm. Versus a plain text email. Got it. Okay. So there's that trade off. You gotta be aware of that. 

[00:07:47] Meredith: The more images you have or the more links that you have, the worse 

[00:07:53] Meredith's husband: probably. Yes. Okay. Yes.

[00:07:55] Meredith's husband: There's no like magic. Number I can give you here of like the, you know, but because of course you can send an email to somebody and put an image in and it's right. This doesn't mean that it's gonna go to their 

[00:08:05] Meredith: right 

[00:08:05] Meredith's husband: promotions folder. But yes, in general, the more stuff you put in, the better the chances that it's gonna go to somebody's promotions folder poop attachments, similar, but to a, a lesser extent, I think, I don't think attachments are a very big issue here, but they kind of best practice rule of thumb is like.

[00:08:23] Meredith's husband: If you know, don't add unnecessary attachments. Also the unsubscribe option. Mm-hmm. Okay. Now you have to have, I think by law you're supposed to have an option for people to unsubscribe. Yes. But the content of your email is being scanned by these automated things, trying to make decisions. Is this, should this go to promotions?

[00:08:43] Meredith's husband: Should it go to their inbox? It's so scary if you have the word unsubscribe. That's kind of a red flag that it's a newsletter. 

[00:08:52] Meredith: Oh, right. What 

[00:08:53] Meredith's husband: I like to do is instead of un using the word unsubscribe, I say, you know, you know, wanna be removed from this list or something. I just don't use the word unsubscribe because you have to include that option.

[00:09:04] Meredith: Right. 

[00:09:05] Meredith's husband: Just 

[00:09:06] Meredith: I don't think, I don't think flow desks gives that option to not say that. 

[00:09:09] Meredith's husband: Oh, some of them do. 

[00:09:11] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:09:12] Meredith's husband: So also in the content of your message, especially the subject lines. You would probably want to avoid, and you probably do this anyway, just as a photographer, you're not trying to sell t-shirts, but avoid overly, I don't wanna say spammy, but salesy words like, don't like sail, you know?

[00:09:33] Meredith's husband: There are going to be some trigger words there. Huh? That might just, just kind of, you know, don't make it sound salesy. 

[00:09:40] Meredith: No, but wait, there's more. 

[00:09:42] Meredith's husband: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so that's two categories, your technical setup and your content. Okay. Now we have the, what we call recipient engagement. How engaged. Are the people you're sending these to.

[00:09:54] Meredith's husband: Okay. Do your emails tend to have a high open rate? Do they have a high click rate? Hmm. Do people reply? Those are all. Good signals, especially when people reply. 

[00:10:07] Meredith: Okay, 

[00:10:07] Meredith's husband: so if you have an, if you have a very low open rate, that's a signal to Gmail that, hey, this is probably, this is some sort of marketing message.

[00:10:14] Meredith's husband: If you, if you never get any replies, that's a signal that it's some sort of marketing message. If nobody ever clicks again, same thing. So try to get, I mean, obviously try to get a high open rate, but also see, try to get replies. Replies are, are one of the best signals you can send to like Gmail and. Other email providers that, that it's shouldn't go to promotions.

[00:10:36] Meredith's husband: If people are replying to it, that's a good sign that it's a legitimate email. 

[00:10:41] Meredith: Is that why some, some companies or people say, if you've received this, just let me know by hitting reply and saying, got it. 

[00:10:49] Meredith's husband: Yes. Exactly. Yeah. But that's all that's doing is trying to, because if people unsubscribe, if they choose your unsubscribe option, that's a signal to Google, to Gmail that, that it's a marketing newsletter.

[00:11:03] Meredith's husband: So you would rather if people can reply, even if they want to be taken off your list, if they were reply and. Say that. Mm. That's a good signal for your newsletter. If they use the unsubscribe, that's a bad signal. 

[00:11:16] Meredith: Got 

[00:11:16] Meredith's husband: it. So that's why Yes, that is why people do that. 

[00:11:19] Meredith: Understood. 

[00:11:20] Meredith's husband: Uh, okay. And then finally there is the.

[00:11:23] Meredith's husband: The list quality. 

[00:11:24] Meredith: Okay. Of the list of email recipients? 

[00:11:27] Meredith's husband: Yes. Your internal list. If you have a lot of old addresses that are in there and those messages are going to bounce, that's a bad sign. You don't wanna send to old out, you don't wanna send to email addresses that don't exist anymore. So you do want to, I would say regularly, uh, remove like email addresses that bounce, right?

[00:11:47] Meredith's husband: When you get a hard bounce or a soft bounce, you want to take those. You don't wanna keep trying to send those. 

[00:11:51] Meredith: What's the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce? 

[00:11:54] Meredith's husband: A soft bounce is like, uh, a website is down or something. It can't be delivered. It'll keep trying. A hard bounce is like that email exists, does not exist anymore.

[00:12:04] Meredith's husband: Okay. A soft bounce might happen if there's some redirecting, like it's. Thanks. I don't know technically what the difference is, but like one of them is soft and one of them's hard, um, unengaged users, if you have users on your list and you have sent them a dozen emails and they've never opened one of them, 

[00:12:23] Meredith: yeah, 

[00:12:23] Meredith's husband: it would probably behoove you to take them off your list.

[00:12:26] Meredith's husband: You might send them, you know what I would maybe do is send them a personal 

[00:12:30] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:12:31] Meredith's husband: Email and just say, Hey, I, I see that you haven't opened any, or let me know if you wanna be on this list anymore. 

[00:12:36] Meredith: Great. And if you 

[00:12:37] Meredith's husband: don't hear from them, take them off. 

[00:12:39] Meredith: Great. 

[00:12:39] Meredith's husband: Your deliverability is going to improve. Uh, if there are, and this is a hard one to get around, really, but if there are addresses on your list.

[00:12:49] Meredith's husband: That are role-based and that would be something like contact at Meredith Photography or info or Hello at one of those that is a little bit of a signal to Gmail that it's that tho you don't really have that person's actual email address. Hmm. That's just, that makes sense. Yeah. So if you have those, if you have those email addresses, email addresses like that on your list, double check.

[00:13:13] Meredith's husband: Do you have the, are they legitimate? Mm-hmm. Or did somebody just give you a fake address or do you have that person's real address if you can update it? I would. I would do that. Sometimes those are legitimate email addresses. That's why I say it's tricky. 

[00:13:27] Meredith: Yeah, 

[00:13:28] Meredith's husband: I would always, in order to keep your list quality high.

[00:13:32] Meredith's husband: When you are building a list, a lot of times there's a double opt-in feature. Feature, right? Yeah. When you, when people are filling out, filling out a form to join your list on say, flow desks, there is usually a checkbox, it will say something like, require double opt-in. And what that is, is people fill out a form, they hit enter, and then you get, they will get the response, like, check your inbox to confirm.

[00:13:56] Meredith's husband: Yes. And that's, so that's, that's so that people don't give away. Fake email address is one. Mm-hmm. And two, it confirms that they, they do in fact have access to that. 

[00:14:05] Meredith: Yeah. That's the thing. 

[00:14:06] Meredith's husband: Okay. 

[00:14:07] Meredith: Does it matter how many people are on your list? Like should you, if let's say you have a hundred people you send it out to Yeah.

[00:14:15] Meredith: Should you make it 20 20, 20 20? 20. 

[00:14:19] Meredith's husband: Oh, you mean should you send them all at once? 

[00:14:22] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:14:23] Meredith's husband: Uh, that, or should you split them? That won't really matter. When you're using something like MailChimp or Flow Desk, they will actually, I, I believe send them out like one per second or something like that. So they're not all going right at once.

[00:14:37] Meredith's husband: I'd actually don't know the. The rule of thumb, if you have like a really large list, like if you have say 10,000 or a hundred thousand. Yeah. I don't know. But if you have like under a thousand, just I think send them all at once. Okay. If you have, if you have like say a dozen. 

[00:14:52] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:14:53] Meredith's husband: Say you have 10, I would actually send those out manually.

[00:14:56] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:14:57] Meredith's husband: There would, deliverability is gonna be a whole lot better 

[00:14:59] Meredith: right now because it's. If you have these people on your mailing list, would it behoove you to send all of them to personally one at a time, to all these people, and if they reply or open, would that incentivize or affect Google when you send it out through flow desk?

[00:15:21] Meredith's husband: Yeah. So that would help your, remember when I talked about your reputation? Yes. You're building up your reputation. If as long as the email address you're sending from is the same. 

[00:15:31] Meredith: Yes. 

[00:15:31] Meredith's husband: So yeah, that we would call that a warmup 

[00:15:34] Meredith: email 

[00:15:35] Meredith's husband: or a warmup sequence. Yeah, that if you can do that, yes, that is, I would advise doing that if you can.

[00:15:41] Meredith's husband: Okay. Send initial message. So a good way to test this. If you're using flow desks or any of these other providers and you are, and this is an issue for you, like your emails, hit the promotions or spam or junk, create, start a new one, start a new email, and just. Don't put any, don't choose a chimp uh, template.

[00:16:02] Meredith's husband: Don't choose a template. Just start from scratch and just put text in. Just put like a couple lines of text. It can be dummy. You're just gonna use this as a test, so it doesn't matter. You say, Hey, just writing to say hi. Send it to yourself. We know there's usually an option, like send a test and then go check your inbox.

[00:16:18] Meredith's husband: See where that ends up. That has the best chances if you're using something like flow desks. Sending a message like that is gonna be the best odds of getting directly into somebody's inbox. Hmm. If that does not reach your inbox, then you're gonna have to work on your sending reputation. Maybe you didn't do the technical setup.

[00:16:39] Meredith: Hmm. 

[00:16:40] Meredith's husband: Et cetera. If it does reach your inbox, then you can add in images. Maybe see where the cutoff point is. You can add an image or two images or a button. But if you add like five images, all of a sudden you notice it goes to your promotions. Right. That's the sort of testing you can do. 

[00:16:55] Meredith: Okay. That's good.

[00:16:55] Meredith's husband: I will say I don't know the exact reputation of flow desks, but I know some of the other major ones. I don't think flow desks is, has a very high uh, deliverability rate would be my guess. It's just my guess I chose mailer light because it has the highest deliverability. If your emails are not getting to people's inboxes, it doesn't matter how pretty they are.

[00:17:18] Meredith: Yeah, it's true. 'cause um, two thirds of mine did not go actually three fourths. 

[00:17:25] Meredith's husband: Yeah. Um, okay, so there's, remember the four categories, your technical setup. The content, the engagement of your subscribers, and the quality of your list, the quality of those addresses. And if you want this all in a PDF checklist, please follow the link below.

[00:17:43] Meredith: Thank you. Thank you. That was great. You're 

[00:17:46] Meredith's husband: welcome. 

[00:17:47] Meredith: That's helpful. I think I wanna send like a just plain text out to my mailing people and say, if you get this, please hit reply and say, got it. 

[00:17:57] Meredith's husband: Yeah. 

[00:17:57] Meredith: Right. 

[00:17:58] Meredith's husband: Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what I would do. 

[00:17:59] Meredith: Okay. 

[00:18:00] Meredith's husband: And also, yeah, FYI in that, in like a typical warmup sequence, send it to you like 10 of your friends on Gmail, and then go ask them.

[00:18:08] Meredith's husband: Go find this message in your promotions folder. Mark it as not promotions, and send me a reply that will help warm up your help, give you a better rot, uh, rotation. 

[00:18:20] Meredith: Rotation. 

[00:18:20] Meredith's husband: It'll give you a better. Reputation with Gmail. 

[00:18:24] Meredith: Your words are all mixed up today. I know. So your words, my voice. Thank you. 

[00:18:32] Meredith's husband: You're welcome.

[00:18:33] Meredith's husband: I mean, yeah, thank, no, I hope this helps.