15 Tips to avoid sending spam from your Magento 2 shop
We know how frustrating it is when emails to your customers are not arriving because they are marked as spam. There are many reasons why email gets filtered and forwarded to a spam folder.
In this tutorial, we give guidance to make sure that your Magento 2 emails get delivered. Of course, you can use this tutorial also for other applications.
What is a spam email?
Email spam, also known as junk email, is an unrequested message sent by email. Many spam emails contain commercial or marketing but may also include disguised links to phishing websites or sites hosting malware. In other cases, spam emails may also come with malware as scripts or other executable file attachments.
From an email sender view, spam email is an email that an Internet Service Provider (ISP) filters into a spam folder instead of the client email inbox.
How does a spam filter work?
When an email comes in the customer's mailbox, and the spam filter is enabled, a list of parameters will check the email.
All parameters are the "Spam Score."
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3. Embed a text version of your email if you are sending formatted HTML Emails
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4. Send emails only to customers who have given you the permission
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10. Make Sure Your DKIM, SPF, Sender-ID, and Domain Keys Are Set Up Properly
1. Stay Compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act
When you send an email message, the primary content should comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
The following seven requirements are the CAN-SPAM Act compliance guide for business:
- Don't use false or misleading header information
- Don't use deceptive subject lines
- Identify the message as an ad
- Tell recipients where you're located
- Tell recipients how to opt-out of receiving future email from you
- Honor opt-out requests promptly
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf
In case your email contains transactional content business relationship content, you are exempted from the CAN rule. If you are exempted from CAN rules, we recommend not to include false or misleading routing information.
2. Avoid Spam Trigger Words and Phishing Phrases
A spam filter is designed to remove commercial advertisements and promotions from the customer's email inbox. For this, the spam filter reacts to "trigger words and phrases."
Sadly, there is no list of spam trigger words or phrases. You should also know that it is not always the case that your email will be marked as spam by using trigger words or phrases.
But it is a fact that you should better reduce or avoid commercial or advertising wording in the email content.
Examples:
- Free membership
- Free offer
- Free membership
- Free grant money
- Free Instant
3. Embed a text version of your email if you are sending formatted HTML Emails
Embedding a text version of your email is an excellent method to prevent landing in the spam folder. It also helps in case the recipient cannot view HTML emails to keep your email readable.
4. Send emails only to customers who have given you the permission
It's always good to have permission to send marketing emails to your customers. Often Magento shop owners offering a coupon code or discount for signup a newsletter. This helps to improve the customer relationship and to get higher conversion rates.
5. Use spam detecting tools before you send emails
We recommend checking your emails before sending by a spam checking service.
IsNotSpam provides a reliable service to check your email. The following parameters will be tested:
- SPF Check
- Sender-ID Check
- DomainKeys Check
- DKIM Check
- SpamAssassin Check
6. Check if you are Blacklisted and get off
If your server is hosted on a cloud hosting providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure, it is a known problem that the used IP addresses are not trusted. Sometimes they are blacklisted.
A first step should be to check if your server is on a blacklist.
You can check the following services to prove if you are on a blacklist:
Sender Score: Blocklist Lookup right proportion of text and images MX Lookup: Blacklist Check
DNSstuff: Spam Database Lookup
In case you are on a blacklist, you should follow up with the site that has added you to the blacklist. You can send a request for getting removed from the blacklist.
7. Create enough text in proportion to your images
If you use images in your email, we recommend getting a right proportion of text and images. An unbalanced ratio between text and images elevated the risk of ending in the spam folder.
Here are some essential tips if you include images in your email:
- Do not send an image-only email
- You should have at least a minimum of two lines of text per image
- Optimize your images with this great tool
- Create well-formed HTML for your email
8. Avoid Spam Traps
Some emails are flagged by ISPs or companies, law office using email addresses that are not used by humans and where you don't have an opt-in or the permission to send an email.
In the worst case, you will be sued or admonished when you are sending an email to a spam trap "email address." It can also come that you are ending in a blacklist and you cannot send email to anyone. Of course, a combination of both is also possible.
To avoid sending an email to spam trap email address, use only email addresses where you have the permission and an opt-in.
9. Avoid large email attachments and executable files
In general, it will be no problem to send emails with a .jpg, .gif, .png and .pdf as attachment.
It starts to become a problem if you are using executable attachments such as .exe, .zip, .swf, doc and many more. We recommend sending emails with executable attachments only to people who are expecting this type of content from you.
Many email providers are limited to an attachment size of 5 Mb. If you need to send a larger attachment, we recommend uploading the file first to service and attach the link for the download.
For this, you can use services like:
- Dropbox: with its free version you can upload up to 5 Gb
- WeTransfer: with its free version you can upload up to 2 Gb
You can easily upload the content and share the link for downloading the content in your email.
10. Make Sure Your DKIM, SPF, Sender-ID, and Domain Keys Are Set Up Properly
Make sure that your email server is correctly configured. These protocols (DKIM, SPF, Sender-ID, and Domain Keys) should be checked if they are properly implemented.
You can use the service of IsNotSpam to make sure that all technical details are correctly set up.
If you like to get more information about the protocols, you can read the following documentation:
11. Avoid Dirty Tricks
Tricks which may have been worked in 1995 are not working today!
If you practice these methods, you cause permanent damage!
- Hashbusting: Inserting random characters in the subject line or content to trick spam filters, e.g. "Fr,e,e. p!r!z.e."
- Deceptive Subject Lines: Starting the subject line with "Re:" or "Fwd:" to suggest a continuing communication.
- Misleading Claims: The subject line starts with "you have won a prize," while the conditions have to be met to claim it.
- Image Text in image: Write a text into the picture to trick spam filters.
12. Care about the From name you are sending with
Spam filters are checking more than just the sender's IP, domain, and content.
The "From" field addresses also get a lot of attention which means you should check the following things:
- Avoid frequent changes of From field names
- Avoid obscure From field names, such as: "36a8354z@domain.com", "noreply@domain.com"
We recommend using clear and trustworthy From field names, such as:
You should limit the number of verified From field names. Build a good reputation for this email addresses by sending only pleasant, solicited emails, and you will notice a substantial difference in email receiving rates.
13. Monitor Your Deliverability
By adding some email addresses like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, and Hotmail, you get a simple way to monitor deliverability.
We recommend to set up approximately five mailboxes at each provider. You just need to send your email to the email addresses and log into each account to verify if the email was successfully delivered.
In case you notice a deliverability problem, please check again all points listed in this tutorial. If this does not solve your issue, you should contact your Email Service Provider about resolving the problem.
14. Avoid Purchased Lists
If you like to destroy your reputation as a sender, a purchased email list is an excellent way to start.
There are many offers in forums where you can buy thousands of "targeted leads" as an email list. These lists are ticking time bombs! Mostly all plans are spiked with dead emails and spam traps that promptly inform mailbox providers that you violate the rules by sending unattended emails.
If you have luck, your email just ends up in a spam folder. At worst cases, you will be banned as a spammer.
Our recommendation: Do not buy any email lists!
15. Use Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)
Amazon SES is developed by the email platform for Amazon.com to get best email delivery rates to its customers. Because of Amazon's growing customer base, they needed to build an email platform that is flexible, scalable, reliable, and cost-effective.
After many years of research and experience in sending emails, Amazon SES was released as service for sending and receiving email. With Amazon SES you reduce the complexity of a reliable email solution for a quarter of the price as if you do it in-house.
Setup and maintain your email servers is outdated because it is too cost-intensive. Instead of an expensive in-house solution, you can use the Amazon SES to integrate the functionality of sending emails directly to the application.
Even Magento Customers will benefit from this because it ensures that your email delivery rates are perfect.
Overview about the Amazon SES Benefits
Industry-Leading Reliability
Amazon SES runs on the highly reliable Amazon Web Services infrastructure. Multiple data centres and redundant systems ensure the highest levels of availability.
Cost-Effective
Pay as you go, and pay only for what you use. There are no upfront fees, no time-consuming pricing negotiations, no fixed expenses, and no minimum charges.
Highly Scalable
Amazon SES is based on the cloud-based technology used by Amazon websites worldwide to send billions of emails every year.
Optimized Inbox Placement
Custom content filtering technologies protect your sender reputation and help ensure that your messages reach your customers' inboxes.
Key-Features of AWS SES
High Deliverability
Even for Magento shop owners, it is important that all sent emails will arrive in your recipients' inboxes. Your customers need to stay informed of transaction emails like order status, shipping or tracking information and invoices. Besides this, it is also important that your newsletter will arrive and your customers stay informed about all news.
To do so, you need the excellent reputation of the IP addresses that the email is sent from. The reputation of an IP address is determined primarily by historical trends.
For example: If the address has a history of sending low-quality or spammy content, it will become a weak reputation. Amazon SES keeps a solid reputation between mailbox providers by actively filtering spam and other negative content.
Authentication
When an internet service provider (ISP) receives an email, they monitor an authenticated sender before delivering the email to a recipient. Authentication means for the ISP that you are the owner of the email address you are sending from. All industry-standard authentication mechanisms are supported by Amazon SES :
- DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
- Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
- Reporting and Conformance (DMARC)
- Domain-based Message Authentication
Monitoring
Amazon SES provides many techniques for monitoring your email posting actions, which helps you fine-tune your email posting tactics. Amazon SES can catch information about the entire email response funnel, including the number of sends, deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, complaints, and rejections.
Sender Reputation Management
Amazon SES includes a reputation dashboard to track problems that could affect your emails' delivery. The dashboard tracks the overall bounce and complaint rates for your account. It can inform you about important things like blacklisted domains in your emails, and reports from reputable anti-spam organizations.
You Pay Only For What You Use
With Amazon SES, there are no upfront costs and no minimum commitments. You pay as you go, and you pay only for what you use.
SES Pricing
You pay $0 for the first 62,000 emails sent per month and $0.10 per 1,000 emails sent after that. For emails with attachments, you pay $0.12 per GB attached content.
Conclusion:
Spam emails, dangerous or not, can be really frustrating to deal with for your customers. It's important to ensure that the emails you send to your customers get delivered, and are not categorized as spam.
Unfortunately, there is no magic or any formula that guarantees your emails won't land in Spam. ESPs, ISPs, and anti-spam laws are a bit brutal, and there is no definite guide to help you deal with the issue of your email landing in Spam.
By paying attention to technical issues to avoid all spam triggers, you are more likely to preserve your credibility and sender reputation to protect your IP address and domain from ever getting blacklisted.
Follow along with the tips discussed in the article and avail of the amazing benefits of Amazon SES (which is even used by Netflix) to get the best email delivery rates.
Want more such tips on email deliverability? Our experts are here to help you out. CONTACT US!
