Summary
In the world of email marketing, the pursuit of inbox delivery can sometimes lead to misguided advice. What initially sounds like a clever workaround or a quick fix can, in reality, severely damage your sender reputation and long-term deliverability. This page explores common pieces of advice that may seem beneficial but are, in fact, detrimental to your email program.
Key findings
- Hidden Text: Techniques like 'hash busting' (adding long, hidden text) to bypass filters or get into the primary inbox are ineffective and can flag your emails as spam.
- List Acquisition: Buying email lists or adding contacts without explicit opt-in is a fundamental deliverability killer, leading to high bounce rates, spam complaints, and blocklisting (blacklisting).
- Authentication Misconceptions: Misplacing DKIM signatures or implementing aggressive DMARC policies without proper testing can break email authentication and prevent legitimate emails from being delivered.
- Engagement Fallacies: Re-sending to unengaged recipients or avoiding unsubscribe links harms sender reputation and leads to more spam reports, rather than improving metrics.
- IP/ESP Switching: Repeatedly switching IPs or ESPs to escape blocklists (blacklists) without addressing underlying issues is a temporary fix that ultimately compounds deliverability problems.
Key considerations
- Sender Reputation: Your sender reputation is paramount. Any advice that compromises it, even if it promises short-term gains, should be avoided. Learn more about how email sending practices impact domain reputation and deliverability.
- List Hygiene: Maintaining a clean, engaged email list is foundational. Avoid practices that lead to high bounce rates or spam complaints, and explore recommended email validation tools and practices. Regular pruning is essential to avoid high bounce rates that harm your sender's reputation.
- User Experience: Prioritize the recipient's experience. Making unsubscribing difficult or sending irrelevant content will erode trust and engagement.
- Compliance: Adhere to anti-spam laws and ESP policies. Ignoring these can lead to account suspension or legal issues.
- Authenticity: True deliverability success comes from building a strong, authentic relationship with your subscribers through legitimate sending practices, not deceptive tactics.
What email marketers say
Email marketers, particularly those focused on immediate gains or growth metrics, sometimes encounter or even perpetuate advice that prioritizes short-term results over long-term deliverability health. This can range from misunderstood tactics to outright harmful practices, often stemming from a desire to circumvent legitimate best practices or achieve inflated engagement numbers.
Key opinions
- Volume Over Quality: Some marketers believe that sending to everyone on a list, all the time, regardless of engagement, will maximize reach and revenue, often ignoring the negative impact on sender reputation.
- Hidden Unsubscribe Links: A misguided opinion is that making the unsubscribe link hard to find (e.g., matching text color to background, excessive whitespace) will reduce opt-outs and retain subscribers.
- Re-sending to Unengaged: The idea that re-sending emails to non-openers or unengaged segments (even old ones) with a 'snappy subject line' will magically boost engagement and deliverability.
- Fake Engagement: Misconceptions persist about artificially inflating open rates or belief in exaggerated metrics from ESPs for purchased lists, indicating a lack of understanding of true engagement.
- Disregarding Opt-in: Some marketers may think it's acceptable to send content they are sure people want, even if it wasn't what the recipient opted in for, potentially leading to increased spam complaints.
Key considerations
- Engagement Matters: True engagement (opens, clicks, replies, non-complaints) is a critical factor for inbox placement. Sending to unengaged users actively harms email deliverability through spam complaints.
- List Health: Neglecting to regularly prune your email list and remove inactive or invalid email addresses increases bounce rates and exposes you to spam traps that can damage sender reputation.
- Transparency and Trust: Ethical sending practices, including easy unsubscribe options, build subscriber trust and a healthier, more responsive list.
- Primary Inbox vs. Delivery: Understanding that 'delivered' doesn't always mean 'inboxed' is crucial. Focusing solely on delivery rates without considering inbox placement (including promotions or spam folders) misses the true measure of success.
- Long-Term Strategy: Sustainable email deliverability comes from consistent, respectful sending practices, not from quick fixes or manipulative tactics.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests: Buying email lists or adding personal contacts without consent is a fast way to expand your audience, as everyone universally enjoys receiving emails. This approach often leads to high complaint rates and damages sender reputation, rather than growing an engaged audience.
Marketer view
Marketer from Higher Logic suggests: There is no need to consistently clean your email list, as all addresses are valuable, and personalization is an unnecessary effort. In reality, failing to prune inactive or invalid addresses significantly harms deliverability and sender reputation.
What the experts say
Deliverability experts often highlight common pitfalls and misunderstandings that plague email senders. These pieces of bad advice typically stem from outdated practices, misinterpretations of technical standards, or attempts to game the system, all of which ultimately degrade email performance. Understanding these can help senders avoid costly mistakes.
Key opinions
- Hash Busting: The belief that adding large, hidden blocks of text (hash busting) to an email will somehow trick spam filters or bypass tab categorization is misguided and actively harmful.
- Technical Misplacements: Advice like placing a DKIM signature at the bottom of every email shows a misunderstanding of how authentication protocols work, potentially invalidating signatures.
- Instant DMARC Enforcement: Implementing a strict DMARC policy (like p=reject) without careful monitoring and gradual rollout is extremely risky and can lead to legitimate emails being rejected. See how to safely transition your DMARC policy.
- IP/ESP Hopscotch: The notion that you can simply get new IPs or switch ESPs whenever you face blocklisting (blacklisting) issues is a dangerous illusion. It avoids the root cause of reputation problems.
- Misguided Testing: Using large fake email lists with non-existent domains (e.g., @abc.com) for testing is detrimental, as it generates high bounces and reflects poorly on your sending domain. Proper email testing is crucial to avoid deliverability issues.
Key considerations
- Root Cause Analysis: Experts emphasize identifying and addressing the fundamental reasons for deliverability issues, such as poor list quality, lack of engagement, or authentication failures, rather than relying on superficial fixes.
- Authentication Integrity: Proper configuration of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is vital. Misinformation regarding these protocols can undermine your email's authenticity. For a simple guide, see DMARC, SPF, and DKIM explained.
- Domain Reputation Over IP: While IPs matter, domain reputation is increasingly critical. Attempting to use lookalike domains to evade reputation issues is a fraudulent practice that will fail. A strong sender reputation is influenced by many factors.
- Sustainable Practices: Building long-term deliverability requires consistent adherence to best practices, gradual list warming, and responsible engagement management.
- Informed Decision-Making: Rely on credible sources and professional advice when troubleshooting deliverability issues, rather than anecdotal or quick-fix suggestions.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks suggests: Employing hash busting, which involves embedding large blocks of hidden text, such as passages from the Bible, can effectively bypass the promotions tab. This method is, however, widely recognized as a spam tactic and can severely harm sender reputation.
Expert view
Expert from Wordtothewise.com suggests: A quick increase in sending volume to a new list will quickly build a positive sender reputation. This contradicts the fundamental principle of IP warming, which requires gradual volume increases to establish trust with ISPs.
What the documentation says
Official documentation and reputable guides from email service providers (ESPs) and industry bodies often implicitly highlight bad advice by advocating for best practices. Misinterpreting or disregarding these guidelines can lead to deliverability issues. This section summarizes common misinterpretations of documented advice that can hinder your email performance.
Key findings
- Free Email Domains: Documentation explicitly warns against using free domains (like Gmail, Yahoo) for commercial bulk sending, as they lack proper authentication for high volume and can cause significant delivery problems.
- Delivery vs. Inbox Placement: A common misunderstanding is equating 'delivery' (email reaching a server) with 'deliverability' (reaching the primary inbox). Documentation clarifies that good delivery doesn't guarantee inbox placement, as emails can still land in spam or promotions.
- List Hygiene Frequency: While documentation advises regular list cleaning, bad advice might suggest infrequent or superficial efforts, ignoring the cumulative damage of inactive or invalid addresses.
- Content Quality vs. Reputation: Some documentation might be misinterpreted to suggest that if sender reputation is high, spammy content is less of an issue. However, quality content is always crucial for sustained engagement and avoiding filters.
Key considerations
- Official Guidelines: Always refer to official documentation from major mailbox providers (like Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo) and your ESP for accurate deliverability guidelines. Understanding email deliverability requires distinguishing between delivery and true inboxing.
- Reputation Impact: Documentation consistently emphasizes sender reputation as a key factor. Ignoring advice on maintaining a healthy reputation (e.g., through proper list cleaning and engagement) can lead to significant deliverability challenges.
- Authentication Requirements: Most documentation stresses the importance of proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to prove sender legitimacy and prevent spoofing. Misinformation about these protocols should be disregarded.
- Holistic Approach: Deliverability is a multifaceted challenge. Documentation typically promotes a holistic approach, combining technical setup, list management, content quality, and recipient engagement. Understanding best practices for avoiding spam filters is key.
Technical article
Documentation from Email Marketing Self Help advises: Sending email marketing campaigns from free email service provider domains (like Gmail) or domains not directly owned by your brand will effectively improve delivery. However, this practice is widely known to cause significant delivery problems and harm your sender reputation.
Technical article
Documentation from Klaviyo Help Center states: Achieving 'delivery' (reaching any folder, including spam) means you have good email deliverability, so further optimization for the primary inbox is unnecessary. This misinterprets the definition of true deliverability, which focuses on reaching the primary inbox, not just any folder.
Related resources
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