A few weeks ago I asked how often you checked your spam folder. I was surprised by the responses. In my very unscientific “study,” the far majority indicated they rarely checked their spam folders.
As the average consumer, this is probably not a huge deal. You’ll likely miss out on some emails that are falsely marked as spam; however, most email clients do a pretty good job telling you what is spam and what is not.
That being said, if you are an email marketer, it’s important to understand which of your emails are landing in the spam folder. Do you know? Are you checking this regularly? Are you doing your own testing by sending a copy of your email to various email accounts? Are you using a third party delivery service like Return Path? Or, are you just crossing your fingers and hoping all is well?
I’m here to tell you today why Gmail spam may be hurting your email marketing program.
On March 19, 2012, Gmail announced what seemingly was a small change to how they deal with spam. In that blog post, they told users how they now show a brief explanation at the top of each of your spam messages as to why each message landed in your spam folder. I cannot confirm this 100%, but by looking at my own inbox over the past 6 weeks, I think Gmail may have also changed a few other things. I have noticed more legitimate email in my spam folder than ever before.
I put together a short, 5-minute screencast to show you what I mean and why it’s critical to ensure your email marketing messages are not landing in Gmail spam.
Can’t see screencast? View here.
Are you seeing the same thing I am? If you are in charge of email marketing at your organization, are you checking to see if your emails are landing in Gmail’s spam folder?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Cheers
DJ Waldow
[...] Recibo muchos correos electrónicos, algunos llegan a mi carpeta de spam; escribí sobre los cambios de Gmail y lo compartí, porque creo que el Spam puede dañar sus planes de marketing por email. [...]
[...] marketing pro, DJ Waldow, points out that legitimate senders are being placed in the spam folder and shares a helpful tip for marketers to inspect their Gmail spam folder carefully for clues to [...]