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Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋
Welcome to Issue #208 of All About Email!
Last week, I had a few more things to say about links, including accessibility, a riddle and improving your linking strategy.
This week, I’ve a little moan about Spam Reporting and yes, it’s personal.
Let’s go! 👇
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Some Context
🌶️ I’ve been feeling a little bit spicy for the last couple of weeks, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I operate another newsletter about WordPress called Loop WP, and I recently published an article about the costs and challenges I’ve faced in running it. 🥺
Although All About Email doesn’t face the same struggles, I’ve been struggling with being marked as spam recently, and I can’t help but take it a bit personally.
Spam is nuanced; we have inbox algorithms pre-empting human decision, and even as humans, what is spam and what isn’t differs.
So, {{first_name|friend}}, is it my fault?
Spam Reporting
🕵️♂️ If you’ve been in email marketing long enough, you will know that ESP spam reporting is not accurate and you’ve a little bit of detective work to do yourself.
🤓 I love checking Google Postmaster Tools (GPT) for my deliverability and compliance with Gmail.
Gmail’s feedback loop is different from other loops, and without it, you are in the dark about Gmail (and Google Workspace) addresses.
In Beehiiv (my ESP), for example, I had three campaigns with a 0.0% spam report, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. 👇
User-reported spam rates generally stayed low but spiked above Google’s thresholds in late July, early August, and early September.
The newsletters flagged for spam in the graph above by GPT when my ESP said 0.0%
🫠 Remember, Google wants spam rate reporting below 0.10% and to avoid ever reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher.
Those numbers above trigger a warning in GPT, and although Google claims it takes seven days to update, this is not always the case.
😬 Sending frequency has an impact. In my case, it has always taken fourteen days for account warnings to be removed!
In Google’s own words:
A spam rate of 0.3% or higher will severely impact your deliverability. Your messages might be rejected or sent to spam
🥺 So, I need to wait two weeks (not just one), and worry about how my deliverability is impacted.
Digging Deeper - Was It Me?
⛔️ Cold emails frustrate the life out of me (for so many reasons), and my instant reaction is to report as spam and block.
Now, I don’t send cold emails, and I don’t spam (in my opinion), but let’s set aside the bruised ego and diagnose these spam reports for Gmail addresses.
Checking Yourself
🥧 This isn’t a framework, but more my process/questions for determining if I need to eat some humble pie and sort out my content, or I can put my grouch hat back on:
Can I tie these spam reports to specific subscribers?
In this case, yes, (by matching with other ESP data) for all three newsletters listed previously.
Are there any patterns emerging?
There sure are! - Unsubscribe reasons were all “content-related” or “prefer not say”.
Subscribers all (except for two) had a mixture of low engagement or had not been subscribers for longer than four months.
Are spam levels in GPT consistently above the threshold for 120 days? **
No - Things were fine for two months (eight newsletters) before Issue 200 and for a month (four newsletters) after Issue 201.
** (GPT only gives us 120 days of data for the spam report.)
Now that I have some potential problems identified, I look closer at the individual newsletters and their content.
Two consecutive newsletters (200 and 201) were flagged above Google’s recommended spam rate. Was the content similar?
No, not in this case.
What about Issue 206’s content?
Nope, that was different from 200 and 201.
Anything in the unsubscribes?
Yes! - It would appear (looking at the data and trying not to speculate) that those who had “content-related” reasons for unsubscribing also seemed to mark my newsletters as spam! - How rude. 😭
What Next?
🤔 I work very hard on this newsletter, and I don’t feel I have a content issue, but as a generalist email marketing newsletter, I know each issue won’t strike a chord with everyone.
✅ So content problems are always at the back of my mind, but I definitely do not feel I spam. I can continually improve, and that’s what I want to do, so expect regular questions and polls going forward to try and keep my content as relevant as possible.
(Remember, the spam reporting discussed in this issue is specifically for Google Postmaster Tools, but the questions I asked myself can be applied to any spam reporting data.)
😀 I will leave you with this {{first_name|friend}}: if you don’t like someone’s content, leave it at that, be kind! Provide honest feedback, and simply unsubscribe.
Please, don’t mark emails as spam if you don’t like them.
That’s it for this week. 👋
(Don’t forget to check out last week’s issue, it’s been my most popular newsletter in the previous ten weeks.)
I Didn’t Know 😎
In my Loop WP newsletter, a subscriber unsubscribed, and their email address ended in obfuscate[dot]email, which I knew was a burner/privacy email, but I didn’t know who supplied it.
Turns out it was Fastmail, which also has integration with 1Password and Bitwarden (which I used for password management) for masking email addresses.
Did you know Fastmail provided email masking?
All About Email - Playlist 🎧
I listen to lots of music, particularly when I’m writing newsletters.
Each week, when I hit the publish button, I’ll share the track I am currently listening to and create the most eclectic email playlist you’ve probably ever heard.
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Email Marketing News & Tips
This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:
Preview in Dark Mode - Free Tool - Check dark-mode compatibility before hitting send. See how it looks in Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail & others. (Mailmodo)
Email AI Builder - Wix Introduces AI-Powered Email Marketing Assistant to Build and Write Campaigns with Ease. (Wix)
Beyond the Inbox - 14 Books That Shaped the Way We Think About Newsletters. (Inbox Collective)
New to Me! - Targeting subscribers by their email domain extensions. (Email Love)
Is This You? - Batch and blast are sinking into the spam folders even now. The future of email marketing is… (Travis Hazlewood)
The Bounce House - with Alison Gootee. Make it easy to unsubscribe, and Gmail ranking promotional emails? (Mailgun & Alison Gootee)
p=quarantine - GoDaddy’s commitment to DMARC implementation. (GoDaddy)
Deliverability - Email List Cleaning Best Practices to Improve Your Deliverability. (Email on Acid)
Changing Tides - 10 shifts that will shape how we send (and read) emails in 2026. (Trevor Hatfield)
🚨 I’ve been experimenting with a smaller, more focused News & Tips section for the last couple of weeks, but I’m always looking for new sources and inspiration.
Got a blog or newsletter I should check out? Let me know.
(Thanks to Emily Ryan, Action Rocket and Al Iverson for some of the link inspiration above.)
If you have any questions about this email or email marketing, please reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.
I hope you have a great week! 👋
