Summary
When facing email deliverability challenges, encouraging recipients to take specific actions can significantly influence inbox placement. Two common actions are adding your email address to their contacts and marking an email as "not spam" from the spam folder. While both are positive signals, they do not necessarily carry equal weight in the eyes of internet service providers (ISPs) like Gmail.
Key findings
- Explicit trust: Adding an address to contacts is often seen as a direct whitelisting action. This signals a high level of trust and intent to receive mail from the sender.
- Behavioral signal: Marking an email as "not spam" is a strong reactive signal. It indicates that the user believes the email was incorrectly filtered, helping to correct the sender's reputation.
- Proactive vs. reactive: Adding to contacts is a proactive step that can prevent future emails from going to spam. "Not spam" is reactive, addressing an issue after it has occurred.
- Ease of action: From a user experience perspective, adding to contacts can sometimes be easier to guide users through, compared to navigating the spam folder.
- Contextual importance: The impact of each action can vary depending on the specific ISP's algorithms and the overall sender reputation. For more on this, check our guide to Google Postmaster Tools.
Key considerations
- Prioritization: If forced to prioritize, encouraging users to add your address to contacts may offer a more consistent long-term benefit for future deliverability.
- User journey: Consider the user's journey. If emails are already consistently hitting spam, users might not see the request to mark as "not spam."
- Combined approach: The most effective strategy is often to encourage both actions. Provide clear instructions for both "add to contacts" and "not spam" options, if feasible.
- Overall engagement: These actions are part of a broader set of engagement factors influencing inbox placement. Learn more about how engagement impacts deliverability.
- Reputation building: High engagement, including positive user actions, is crucial for building and maintaining a strong sender reputation, which is key for inbox placement. More details are available in this email deliverability guide.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often face the practical challenge of guiding users to take actions that improve deliverability. Their perspectives focus on user behavior, ease of implementation, and the direct impact on campaign performance. The consensus leans towards 'add to contacts' as a more reliable and user-friendly approach for long-term inboxing, though 'not spam' is valuable for immediate remediation.
Key opinions
- Whitelisting effect: Many marketers find that adding to contacts acts as a strong personal whitelist, ensuring future emails bypass filters.
- Visibility challenge: The primary hurdle with "not spam" is that if an email is already in spam, the recipient might not see the instruction to mark it as legitimate.
- User friction: Marketers note that requesting users to dig into their spam folder to mark an email as "not spam" introduces more friction than a simple "add to contacts" request.
- Proactive solution: Prioritizing "add to contacts" is seen as a proactive measure to prevent issues before they arise, especially for new subscribers or critical communications.
- Engagement signals: Both actions contribute to positive engagement signals, which are crucial for overall inbox placement. Understanding engagement factors is key.
Key considerations
- Instruction clarity: Marketers must provide clear, concise instructions for either action to maximize user compliance.
- Audience rapport: A strong relationship with the audience increases the likelihood of them performing these helpful actions.
- Holistic strategy: These user actions should complement broader deliverability best practices, not replace them. For example, consistent email deliverability issues require a comprehensive review.
- Segmentation impact: Highly engaged segments are more likely to perform these actions, reinforcing positive signals. Explore improving inbox placement with segmentation.
- Spam filter evolution: Modern spam filters consider many factors. Read more about how spam filters work.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Email Geeks notes that adding an email address to contacts is very effective. These contacts tend to be treated as whitelisted for the inbox, which is a significant win for deliverability. It's a direct signal of intent.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Forum suggests that asking users to remove emails from spam can be a catch-22. If the email is already in spam, users might not even see the request to move it, making the instruction ineffective for those who need it most.
What the experts say
Deliverability experts delve deeper into the technical mechanisms and algorithmic weighting that ISPs apply to user actions. They emphasize that while both "add to contacts" and "not spam" are positive signals, their distinct nature influences their impact on sender reputation and overall inbox placement. The explicit nature of adding a contact generally carries more direct weight.
Key opinions
- Direct whitelisting: Experts confirm that "add to contacts" functions as a strong explicit whitelist. ISPs, especially Gmail, highly value this direct indication of desired mail.
- Feedback loop signal: The "not spam" action is a crucial positive feedback signal. It tells the ISP that their filtering was incorrect, leading to adjustments in their algorithms for that specific sender.
- Reputation rebuilding: While both build reputation, "not spam" can be particularly effective for repairing a damaged reputation by reversing negative signals like spam complaints.
- Engagement hierarchy: Engagement signals, including these user actions, form a hierarchy. Proactive additions to contacts often sit higher as they reflect explicit intent before a problem arises.
- ISP variations: The precise weighting varies by ISP (e.g., Gmail vs. Outlook). Each provider has unique algorithms for processing user feedback and influencing inbox placement.
Key considerations
- Consistency: Consistent positive user engagement over time, including these actions, is more impactful than isolated incidents.
- Underlying issues: If emails are consistently landing in spam, user actions are a band-aid solution. Experts advise addressing core deliverability issues, such as poor sender reputation.
- Spam complaints: A high spam complaint rate can negate the positive effects of "not spam" actions. For Gmail, complaint rate directly affects placement.
- Authentication: Ensuring proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is foundational. Without it, even positive user actions may struggle to overcome initial filtering hurdles. Learn about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- Context of action: The overall context of user engagement (opens, clicks, replies) combined with these explicit actions paints a complete picture for ISPs. This guide outlines deliverability best practices.
Expert view
Deliverability expert from Email Geeks (steve589) confirms that "add to contacts" is definitely the stronger action. These addresses are typically treated as whitelisted for the inbox, providing a direct and powerful signal of recipient intent to receive.
Expert view
Deliverability expert from Spamresource.com emphasizes that explicit actions like adding to contacts carry significant weight because they represent a clear, conscious choice by the recipient to receive mail from a specific sender, bypassing general filtering rules.
What the documentation says
Official documentation from major mailbox providers and industry standards often outlines how user engagement signals contribute to sender reputation and inbox placement decisions. While explicit weighting isn't typically revealed, the emphasis is consistently on positive user interaction. 'Add to contacts' provides a direct, enduring positive signal, while 'not spam' acts as an important corrective measure within the feedback loop.
Key findings
- User preference: Mailbox providers often state that user preference signals (like adding to contacts) are highly influential in determining mail routing.
- Feedback loop integration: "Not spam" actions are critical components of ISP feedback loops, directly informing their filtering systems about misclassifications.
- Explicit vs. implicit: Adding to contacts is an explicit positive signal. Marking as "not spam" is also explicit, but typically in response to a negative outcome, providing a different type of signal.
- Sender reputation core: Both actions contribute to a positive sender reputation. ISPs use a complex array of engagement metrics to assess this reputation. For Gmail, reputation is key.
- Trust signals: These actions are part of a broader set of trust signals (alongside authentication like DMARC, SPF, DKIM) that ISPs use to ensure legitimate email delivery. Read more about advanced email authentication.
Key considerations
- Algorithm complexity: ISPs employ sophisticated algorithms that dynamically weigh these and other factors. No single action guarantees inbox placement. See how complex inbox filters are.
- Domain reputation: The impact of these actions is contextualized by the overall domain and IP reputation. A strong reputation amplifies positive signals. Understand your email domain reputation.
- Engagement consistency: Continuous positive engagement is what truly moves the needle. Isolated positive actions might not compensate for systemic issues. This aligns with new Google & Yahoo thresholds.
- Recipient behavior: Providers monitor how frequently users perform these actions across their user base to identify broad trends about sender quality.
- Holistic view: ISP documentation emphasizes a holistic approach to deliverability, where these user actions are part of a larger picture of sender trustworthiness. Mailgun's email deliverability guide touches on this.
Technical article
Official documentation from Google Postmaster Tools highlights that user engagement signals, including moves to inbox and additions to contacts, are heavily weighted when determining sender reputation and subsequent inbox placement. These actions directly influence filtering decisions.
Technical article
Official documentation from Microsoft's Outlook Postmaster states that recipient interactions are critical for their filtering systems. Explicit actions like adding a sender to the safe senders list (analogous to contacts) bypass many content-based filters.
Related resources
5 resources
Related pages
How to improve email inbox placement with sending priority and audience segmentation?
How to improve Gmail email inbox placement and avoid spam?
What email engagement factors are most important for inbox placement?
How does starring a promo email in Gmail affect deliverability and inbox placement?
How will Google & Yahoo's new spam rate threshold affect subdomain and domain reputation and inbox placement?
Email Deliverability Issues: Getting Your Messages to the Inbox in 2025
Ultimate Guide to Google Postmaster Tools V2
Why Your Emails Are Going to Spam in 2024 and How to Fix It
A simple guide to DMARC, SPF, and DKIM
A practical guide to understanding your email domain reputation
