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The company I work for sends a marketing email at least one time per week using Mailchimp's email service. All of our subscribers are opt-in active customers and our emails are not spammy. There is an above average text to image ratio, and copy does not contain 'spammy' words.

However, we've recently started noticing that our emails are being filters to spam significantly more often.

According to Mailchimp, by using their internal authentication our campaigns will pass SenderID, SPF, DomainKeys, and DKIM checks.

What else can I do to reduce the likelihood of our emails going to peoples spam folder, and Gmails promotions tab?

Email Header

From =?utf-8?Q?The=20Bouq=27aneers?= Mon Mar 24 12:39:14 2014
X-Apparently-To: [email protected] via 98.136.214.242; Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:39:15 +0000
Return-Path: <bounce-mc.us4_17409995.559249-theodore.boulard=yahoo.com@mail138.us4.mcsv.net>
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X-Originating-IP: [205.201.128.138]
Authentication-Results: mta1290.mail.bf1.yahoo.com  from=mail138.us4.mcsv.net; domainkeys=pass (ok);  from=mail138.us4.mcsv.net; dkim=pass (ok)
Received: from 127.0.0.1  (EHLO mail138.us4.mcsv.net) (205.201.128.138)
  by mta1290.mail.bf1.yahoo.com with SMTP; Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:39:15 +0000
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; s=k1; d=mail138.us4.mcsv.net;
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Received: from (127.0.0.1) by mail138.us4.mcsv.net id h624u6174lge for <[email protected]>; Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:39:14 +0000 (envelope-from <bounce-mc.us4_17409995.559249-theodore.boulard=yahoo.com@mail138.us4.mcsv.net>)
From: =?utf-8?Q?The=20Bouq=27aneers?= <[email protected]>
Reply-To:  <[email protected]>
To: =?utf-8?Q?=3C=3C=20Test=20First=20Name=20=3E=3E?= <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:39:14 +0000
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Mailer: MailChimp Mailer - **CIDa9958ea379**
X-Campaign: mailchimpe9c7499aeda15720c6e28fa94.a9958ea379
X-campaignid: mailchimpe9c7499aeda15720c6e28fa94.a9958ea379
X-Report-Abuse: Please report abuse for this campaign here: http://www.mailchimp.com/abuse/abuse.phtml?u=e9c7499aeda15720c6e28fa94&id=a9958ea379&e=
X-MC-User: e9c7499aeda15720c6e28fa94
X-Feedback-ID: 17409995:17409995.559249:us4:mc
X-Accounttype: pd
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:unsubscribe-e9c7499aeda15720c6e28fa94-a9958ea379-@mailin1.us2.mcsv.net?subject=unsubscribe>, <http://TheBouqs.us4.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=e9c7499aeda15720c6e28fa94&id=6f70b006f7&e=&c=a9958ea379>
Sender: "The Bouq'aneers" <[email protected]>
x-istest: yes
Subject: =?utf-8?Q?=5BTest=5D=20=5BTEST=5D=20Spring=20has=20Sprung=20Reminder?=
x-mcda: TRUE
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="_----------=_MCPart_1211447354"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Length: 41034

Screenshot (Desktop on left, Mobile on right)

Isnotspam.com Test Results

SPF Check : pass Sender-ID Check : pass DomainKeys Check : neutral DKIM Check : pass

SpamAssassin Check : ham (non-spam)

Details:

HELO hostname: mail94.us2.mcsv.net Source IP: 173.231.139.94 mail-from: [email protected]

Anonymous To: [email protected]

SPF check details:

Result: pass ID(s) verified: [email protected] DNS record(s): thebouqs.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all" thebouqs.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.google.com ~all"

Sender-ID check details:

Result: pass

ID(s) verified: [email protected] DNS record(s): thebouqs.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all" thebouqs.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.google.com ~all"

DomainKeys check details:

Result: neutral (message not signed) ID(s) verified: [email protected] Selector= domain= DomainKeys DNS Record=

DKIM check details:

Result: pass ID(s) verified: [email protected] Selector=k1 domain=mail94.us2.mcsv.net DomainKeys DNS Record=k1._domainkey.mail94.us2.mcsv.net

SpamAssassin check details:

SpamAssassin v3.3.1 (2010-03-19)

Result: ham (non-spam) (0-1.9points, 10.0 required)

pts rule name description

  • -0.0 RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE RBL: Sender listed at http://www.dnswl.org/, no
  • trust
  • [173.231.139.94 listed in list.dnswl.org]
  • -0.0 RCVD_IN_IADB_UT_CPR_MAT RBL: IADB: Sends no material under Utah's
  • CPR
  • [173.231.139.94 listed in iadb.isipp.com]
  • -0.1 RCVD_IN_IADB_DK RBL: IADB: Sender publishes Domain Keys record
  • -0.0 RCVD_IN_IADB_SENDERID RBL: IADB: Sender publishes Sender ID record
  • -0.2 RCVD_IN_IADB_RDNS RBL: IADB: Sender has reverse DNS record
  • -2.2 RCVD_IN_IADB_VOUCHED RBL: ISIPP IADB lists as vouched-for sender
  • -0.0 RCVD_IN_IADB_LISTED RBL: Participates in the IADB system
  • -0.1 RCVD_IN_IADB_SPF RBL: IADB: Sender publishes SPF record
  • -0.0 SPF_HELO_PASS SPF: HELO matches SPF record
  • -0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record
  • -0.4 RP_MATCHES_RCVD Envelope sender domain matches handover relay domain
  • 1.0 DK_SIGNED DK_SIGNED
  • 0.1 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
  • 0.0 BAYES_50 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 40 to 60%
  • [score: 0.5000]
  • 0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily
  • valid
  • -0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=-1.9 required=-20.0 tests=BAYES_50,DKIM_SIGNED, DKIM_VALID,DK_SIGNED,HTML_MESSAGE,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE,RCVD_IN_IADB_DK, RCVD_IN_IADB_LISTED,RCVD_IN_IADB_RDNS,RCVD_IN_IADB_SENDERID,RCVD_IN_IADB_SPF, RCVD_IN_IADB_UT_CPR_MAT,RCVD_IN_IADB_VOUCHED,RP_MATCHES_RCVD,SPF_HELO_PASS, SPF_PASS autolearn=no version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Score: -1.9
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  • 2
    Can you post the full headers of one of the emails here? That may, or may not help to give you a good answer. If you don't know how to get the headers, you can, for instance, send an email to a hotmail account and when you are reading the message look for the option "full headers" or "source code of the email". Something like that is called.
    – PatomaS
    Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 1:02
  • I've updated my question with the headers as you requested. Thanks for the review.
    – davidcondrey
    Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 16:30

3 Answers 3

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4

To be honest with you I would like to think that Mail Chimp will have spf records and domain keys etc all sorted out and generally keeping the reputation of their infrastructure clean.

Hence I would imagine this will be issues with your content and interactions from your recipients.

A couple of things I have noticed straight off.

It looks quite image heavy there are spam rules regarding the balance of images to text.

My understanding is that spam filters cant check what is on an image hence is one preferred route for spammers to use. You can apparently fill the images alt text with a couple of relevant paragraphs to circumvent this. But make sure you dot just use the same paragraphs lots as this will look like duplicate content.

In addition to this there are a bunch of online tools that can check for spammy characteristics of your message. Such as -

http://www.emailspamtest.com/
http://isnotspam.com/

Also an issue we had was people who no longer wanted our emails just junked us. This is really damaging for your reputation its much more preferable that they unsubscribe. We moved our opt-out link to the top of our email and made it prominent rather than in the footer text and we belie that this helped.

Also the frequency and relevancy of your email messages to your users will also affect the number of times you are junked.

Deliverability will always remain somewhat of a dark art though - good luck!

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3
  • 1
    +1 for users hitting "This is spam" instead of unsubscribing. We see the same behaviors and GMail, Yahoo and AOL makes this particularly easy for users to do. The problem is that hitting the spam button teaches those networks (and others) that you're a spammer and overall delivery rates go down.
    – JCL1178
    Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 17:34
  • Oh yes, I know the email is image heavy, it's a constant battle with marketing+design vs dev. But I've run our emails against nearly every one of these only testing tools I've been able to find (and thanks for your links, I didn't know about these) but the score I get is always good. I'll post the results of the test I just ran on isnotspam.com in my question. Thx
    – davidcondrey
    Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 17:47
  • 3
    Design vs Dev the never ending battle continues ;-)
    – megasteve4
    Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 18:02
1

There are many things that we can't say for sure because the spam world and spam filters are a never ending battle and constantly adding new rules and new ways to avoid rules. But a few things on those headers have caused problems on some clients.

X-Apparently-To

Many people has rules stating that if they are not a clear recipient addressed on the to field the mail should be discarded.

Return-Path

Although technically correct, this header has bad elements, for instance, it includes the word bounce, which some filters may use to redirect or prevent the mail to reach the inbox. That header indicates a real bounce address from your company, but any problem parsing it makes the email a message without return-path, which is basic for not being considered spam.

Subject and encoding of the message

You have non standard characters on the subject, not completely unseen, but not the most standard way, plus the encoding of the mail seems wrong, to me it looks that the system is relying on the default behaviour of clients to assume a default of utf-8. If you can control that, ensure that you set the content-type, either iso-8859-1 or utf-8 whichever is right for you.

In any case, nothing seems to be a show stopper, so most probably the problem is related to specific rules that you clients have. If you can run a small study with some of your users to find out their rules and email clients that may help to improve the situation.

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1

IMHO your best bet is really to avoid using mailchimp for opted-in lists - at least 50% of the email I get from them is spam (the messages are also generally illegal under UK law), so I would wager that a large number of services proactively dump all mailchimp email into spam folders. A lot of other people seem to feel the same way, here's a few examples:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-isp/2016/08/msg00001.html http://www.techie7.com/threads/72825/ http://otakunozoku.com/block-that-mailchimp-spam/ http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/614184-mailchimp-haven-spammers-discuss.html http://bitmonger.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/avoid-wretched-spammers-at-mailchimp.html http://forum.spamcop.net/topic/16829-internetwide-block-for-spamchimp/

There is one service that I actually want emails from who use mail chimp - if not for that, I'd be auto-marking all mailchimp emails as spam. I have extensive experience reporting abuse to mailchimp, they do not act on it promptly (I have never received a response in less than a few hours, and the response is never 'that account has been deactivated until they prove they are using an opt in list as our T&Cs require' - it is always 'we will investigate').

If, as you say, you're running on entirely opt-in (where the user has actively opted in, directly to your company, to receive marketing from your company) lists then your best bet may be a self hosted solution. Depending on your volumes, this may be more expensive than mailchimp.

Alternatively, according to a survey done last year by Capterra, MailChimp alternative Constant Contact had much greater deliverability than MailChimp:

Of our survey participants, the primary reason that marketers preferred Constant Contact when they had used both systems was because they saw greater email deliverability with Constant Contact.

Anecdotally I don't believe I've ever received a single spam from Constant Contact, so that gels with the survey results.

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