One of the biggest challenges of mass cold outreach is ensuring that your emails don’t land in the SPAM folders, which can happen for a bunch of different reasons. Whether it’s reaching out to potential leads or partners, this is a huge issue for all businesses that put a lot of time and effort into their email correspondence. 

While actual spammers are getting more creative by the day, email service providers are constantly one step ahead by implementing smarter ways to separate legit emails from SPAM. As a result, the percentage of email that is spam has been slowly decreasing over the years, but still accounts for almost half of the global email traffic. 

Businesses are therefore faced with a big challenge – how to send cold email marketing without spam? First, they should regularly test emails for spam. This begs the question – “How can I test my email for SPAM?”. 

These tests can be done manually by sending emails to ‘burner’ email addresses to test deliverability but it will be impossible to tell why they land in SPAM if they do so. The other option is to use a dedicated SPAM test tool that will provide detailed insights regarding the cause and solution of this issue. 

To thoroughly check an email address for spam, it’s crucial to also include a domain and IP address spam check, which could both be factors affecting your overall spam reputation and deliverability. 

It’s also important to always triple-check that your emails comply with all email marketing regulations. While double opt-in is the safest way, understandably, that’s not always possible in cold outreach. 

For those wondering how to avoid emails going to spam in Gmail, the short answer is to always follow the email spam best practices. Here are some of those top email marketing tips to avoid spam: 

• Ensure proper email setup and authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC)
• Always check for spam content in your email copy, avoiding ‘trigger’ words and phrases, excessive links and attachments, etc. 
• Before new marketing campaigns, make sure your address is not included in any email spam database. 
• Constantly keep track of your deliverability metrics to be proactive in any potential spam-triggering issues. 

Btw, if you’re on the receiving end and wondering how to reply to spam emails, the answer is – don’t. The only appropriate spam email response is to blacklist the sender and go on with your day.