Magento Spam Wars: How to Avoid Sending Spam Mails to Customers From Your Magento Store

Website owners spend copious amount of time in practices and strategies that are focused on enhancing customer experience. There are several areas that can be worked on to eventually contribute to a seamless experience on your website – the web design, display of product/services, content, checkout funnel, customer support etc.

But there’s this one aspect that Magento store owners have constantly been concerned about and still overlook the need for a solution and that is Magento emails landing in the spam folders.

What Qualifies as Spam?

Email spam can be defined as unsolicited messages sent in bulk via email. Here’s what a spam typically looks like;

• The identity of the sender is unknown.

• It consists of unknown or spoofed email addresses.

• It contains unfamiliar links or questionable attachments.

• It often contains content that is not requested by the receiver.

Note that these pointers show how a spam generally looks like. Magento emails even with solicited, serious messages often end up in the spam folder of the user. Not only email spam gives receivers security concerns while opening emails, but they also increase the possibility of your important business messages getting unnoticed by the prospects.

How do Spam Filters Work?

Make sure that emails relevant to users are reaching them in the main inbox. Prevent unwanted or harmful emails from getting to the inbox.

1. Filtration On Parameters

• The emails are evaluated according to predefined standards in Magento.

• The rating of the email as spam or not spam is affected by these standards.

• The ultimate determination on whether an email was classified as spam or professed is made upon that rating.

2. Blacklists and Whitelists

• Blacklists:
  • Lists of IP addresses and domains that people know they send spam from.
  • Those emails which come from blacklisted places are stopped immediately.

• Whitelists:
  • Lists of acknowledged senders and approved sources.
  • Those emails that come through from sources on the whitelist are always allowed.

3. Sender Esteem

• Poor Esteem:
  • Arising from former spam complaints or the absence of sufficient email authentications.
  • People get their emails spammed because of these senders.

• High Esteem:
  • Attributed to good domain reputations alongside correct email authentications.
  • This enhances the possibility of receiving email.

4. Content Analysis

• When looking into content for spam triggers, be sure you check your emails.

• Make sure you scrutinise both the subject line and e-mail text itself since some peculiar terms or odd layouts might cause messages to be considered junk mail.

5. Machine Learning

• Ongoing email assessment can be done by machine learning algorithms.

• Identifying spam in Magento is easier with enhanced pattern identification by algorithms.

• The efficacy of the machine increases with constant use.

In the following part, we will discuss some effective ways to stop your Magento emails getting into the user’s spam folder.

Tips to Avoid Spam Emails in Magento

MAGENTO & SERVER CONFIGURATIONS

The first step to keeping your emails out of your subscriber’s spam folder is to properly configure the SPF DNS record. SPF is a record in a domain’s DNS that lists the IP addresses authorised to send emails on behalf of the domain. So, when a recipient server gets an email, the SPF record checks if the IP address through which the message has been sent is authorised.

Another important practice is to use Domain Keys. This email authentical method involves attaching a signature to outgoing emails for the recipient server to verify the authenticity of the sender and message integrity. In addition, Reverse DNS ensures that each email sent from a server in the domain has its own IP address and a resolved hostname.

Even after properly configuring your Magento, if your emails are still identified as spam, chances are your IP address has been blacklisted by the recipient server. Our Magento Consultant team can help get your name out of a blacklist, get a new IP address and build a positive reputation again.

THE RECOMMENDED EMAIL STRUCTURE

Plain Text:

Magento only sends the HTML part of email which entitles those emails for a high spam score. You can either create the text part manually or choose to automatically create text for your email based on its HTML part.

Embedded Images:

Sending emails without images can be an overlooked branding mistake that can cost conversions. When using images in your email, it is suggested to embed them directly into your message and not link them from any remote sources.

Line Length of Quote-Printable:

According to RFC 2822 specification, each line should contain a minimum of 78 characters and a maximum of 998 characters. This specification identifies emails for spam. By default, Magento uses 200 characters as quint-printable line length which can be changed according to your need.

EMAIL CONTENT CONSIDERATIONS

Write meaningful text:

The spam filter is designed to detect promotions and commercial ads. So, make sure your text is useful and valuable to readers rather than begin just pushy and salesy.

Avoid link shorteners

Link shorteners may enhance your URLs, but they also increase the chances of your email getting identified as spam.

Avoid single image emails

Emails with a single image are often classified as spam. Use HTML coding instead to prevent your email from getting into a spam folder.

THE NECESSARY EMAIL TESTIING

Once you have drafted an email, it is important to check your message for spam score. You can use a third-party service which will generate several previews of your message and check them on different platforms like desktop and smartphone before you send them out. In addition, it is a good idea to send a few copies of Magento email to people around; colleagues and friends, to check if they find it valuable from the view point of a reader.

MAGENTO EXTENSIONS 

Besides configuring the server and organising your email structure, there are some Magento extensions you can use to protect against spam;

NoBots: The extension uses an innovative spam verification and detection system to protect Magento sites from unwanted bots and spam. It also blocks spam reviews, contact from messages and spam generated through custom forms.

Follow Up Email: It helps you to keep in touch with your customers through follow up emails on events like arrival of fresh collection, special holidays, car abandonment, new order placement, birthday and more. With the extension, you will make sure that you don’t lose any of your important messages to spam folder and get unnoticed by your customers.

MailGun: The extension allows you to send, receive and track emails effortlessly. You can keep track of who opens your emails and who clicks on them while configuring the Magento dashboard settings to keep your mails from landing in spam folders.

Click here for more info: Extensions that Every Magento Store Needs

Wrapping Up,

Practising these guidelines will help you protect your Magento site against spam by increasing the chances of your emails to land in the inbox instead of the spam folder.

Hosting your Magento site on a dedicated server is also a good way to avoid spam as it provides you with unique IP addresses unlike a shared server an IP address is shared by several websites.

At Web Circle, we offer high-end Magento services that are purpose built to meet your ecommerce website development and hosting needs. We assign you the best Magento specialist in Sydney to work on your project and make Magento website development and integrations easy and effective for you. For any inquiries, reach out to us! Contact us at 1300 760 363.