Email deliverability

There are a few things that influence whether your email reaches your customer’s inbox.

1. Reputation

Your reputation matters. If an email provider (e.g. Gmail) sees that a lot of the emails you send don’t get opened, or are put in junk/marked as spam, it will start automatically putting your emails in junk.

• Make sure emails are useful and relevant to the customer.
• When you first reply to an inquiry, change the subject line to something the customer will understand and want to engage with, and that matches the content of your email. Help them understand why you’re emailing them. E.g. “Your Italy inquiry via Responsible Travel”. (We put the customer email address in the subject so you can easily find/distinguish between emails but that's not useful for the customer.)
• Make sure your company is in the ‘from name’ - e.g. “John - My Adventure Company” rather than just “John Smith”.
• If you send out bulk emails, try sending to your most engaged customers first (or only to them if you’re having issues), so they’re more likely to get opened. Keep a clean list by removing people who never engage with your emails.
• If your bulk emails are sent from a shared IP address you may want to consider getting a dedicated one so your reputation isn’t linked to other's.

2. Spam-like content

Email providers have always tried to block emails that look like spam. All caps, coloured text, bold, italics, exclamation marks, phrases like “limited time offer”, big images, attachments, links, etc could result in your email being put in the junk folder, depending on the context and your reputation.

• If you’re having problems, try sending very plain text emails with no images, bold, links, etc. (You don't need large signatures in each reply in a conversation.)
• Avoid ‘used car salesman’ phrases. There are lots of spam word lists online, none definitive, and in reality it will depend on context but these will give you an idea of phrases to avoid.

Even if emails aren't going into junk, Gmail (and others) split emails into 'primary' and 'promotions' inboxes. Aim for individual responses to go into 'primary' by sending more relevant, personalised emails with less images, links, marketing-speak, etc, as above. (Avoid 'no-reply' addresses and reply-to addresses that are different from the sender.)

3. The tech factor

In early 2024 Google, Apple and Yahoo tightened email security. You may need to make some technical changes to prove to the email provider that you are who you say you are and your emails aren’t spam. People also need to be able to easily unsubscribe from your newsletter / bulk emails. (If someone doesn’t want to hear from you it's better that they unsubscribe than mark your emails as spam.)

• Overview (non-technical)
• Google’s requirements
• Requirements (Google vs Apple vs Yahoo) and key dates

If you’re not sure where to start, try contacting whoever sends out your emails (e.g. Mailchimp) or whoever you’ve set up your email addresses with (e.g. the company you bought your website domain from, or WordPress, etc).

If you’re sending more than 100 emails a day to Gmail addresses we recommend setting up Google postmaster tools. This will help you understand your reputation and spam scores.