Why Are My Shopify Emails Going To Spam and How to Stop them?

Nothing can be more frustrating to an online business than the marketing emails going to customers’ spam folders. Imagine such a situation happening to you after coming up with brilliant email marketing strategies to improve your Shopify store’s sales. That is a major setback for many digital businesses, whether it’s small or large.

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A global email traffic study by Statista revealed that approximately 45.37% of email traffic as of December 2021 were spam messages. This means that emails going to the recipient’s spam folder are not an unnatural phenomenon.

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However, it is also possible to prevent Shopify emails from going to the recipient’s spam folder. All you need to know is the causative actions first before seeking to find solutions. 

What does Shopify Emails going to Spam actually mean?

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Before we dive into the preventive measures and solutions, it is important that you understand what we mean by Shopify emails going to spam. This basically refers to when an email, newsletter, or any type of sales or marketing content from Shopify appears in the receiver’s spam folder.

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The intended destination ought to have been the recipient’s inbox. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the email is flagged as spam hence the recipient won’t be notified about it. The only way that the individual gets to see the email is by navigating to the spam folder.

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Furthermore, many mail account settings are often set to ensure the automatic deletion of spam emails after a specified duration. The common period of time is normally 30 days. However, that depends on the mail account you are using, plus you can always change the duration.

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In a nutshell, if your Shopify emails go to the client’s spam folder that would be a waste of marketing efforts, time, and resources. Well, let’s find out why your Shopify emails are going to the customer’s junk folder.

Reasons Why your Shopify Emails go to Spam

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There are numerous actions that are attributed to emails going to the spam folder. Some of these might be unintentional whereas others are just mistakes that can be avoided. Some of the reasons include:

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• Using suspicious/spam trigger wording

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Over the years, people have discovered that most, if not all, emails containing phrases like ‘Congratulations, you have received or won….’ are a scam. So, that means if you happen to send any legitimate email using such wording, chances are that it will end up going to spam. In this case, the problem isn’t you, but the questionable nature of such phrases. 

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• Misleading subject lines

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When you open your email inbox, the first things you notice are the sender’s name and the subject line. Even as you scroll through your inbox, those are the two things you’ll pay attention to before reading the actual content of the email. The reason why many people do that is that you can easily tell whether an email is legitimate or spam just from the aforementioned indicators.

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So, if a client finds your subject line suspicious, the obvious thing to do will be to report the email as spam. Remember the more people mark your Shopify emails as spam, then it is less likely they to appear in email inboxes in the future.

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• Blacklisted IP address

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When you send emails to your customers, their SMTP server clears your email and determines whether it is spam. The server judges your reputation based on several factors such as your IP address blacklist history. If your email IP address has been blacklisted previously, then it will automatically end up in the recipient’s spam folder.

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• No physical address or unsubscribe option

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For eCommerce entrepreneurs, it is necessary to have a physical postal address attached to your Shopify marketing or sales emails. The essence of mentioning your physical address is to enhance traceability. In addition, you need to ensure that your emails give customers the option to unsubscribe from receiving email notifications from you.

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Not because the customers don’t want your products, but because there are people who just don’t want to receive countless marketing emails in their inboxes. Emails that lack both or either the physical address and/or the unsubscribe option are most likely going to end up in the spam folder.

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• Buying subscriber email lists

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Some online store owners often resort to using tricks such as purchasing email lists then sending out emails to the mail subscribers without their permission. Such tricks are not just ineffective but also unethical and illegal in many countries. Furthermore, it is highly possible that these emails sent from an unknown sender to random recipients will most likely end up going to spam.

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• Including file attachments in your emails

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File attachments have been known to be the most notorious avenue of spreading software viruses. Due to this, many clients or people mark suspicious emails with file attachments as spam.

How to Check Whether your Emails are Going to Spam/junk

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In order to determine if your emails are going to spam, you need to run a spam test. The possibility of your emails ending up in the junk folder can only be equated to a particular percentage.

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It is not a binary ‘yes this one will’ or ‘no this one won't end up in the junk folder. So, to run a spam test:

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• Go to Google and search run email spam test.
• You can select any preferred website, or you can use mailtester, mailgenius, and mailtrap.
• Run a test, and you will get your email report on how often you end up in the inbox or spam folders.

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How to Stop Shopify Emails from going to Junk

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Since you now have a gist of what can make your Shopify emails go to the recipient’s spam folder, let’s get to the solutions. 

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Using 7 Best Practices:

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1. Opt-in emails and permissions: Ensure that the people you are sending marketing or sales emails to have opted in either through registration, sharing their contact information, or subscriptions. Don’t send emails to people without their consent or permission. By asking for permission to send emails, you build your reputation and a good reputation is the way to getting your emails delivered. 
2. Avoid file attachments: Avoid file attachments when sending your Shopify emails so that they can be cleared as risk-free and safe. It is easy to get viruses by clicking on attachments which is why many people mark emails as spam.
3. Stay under the radar: Ensure that you include a valid physical address in your email. It can be a personal home address or a private mailbox used for business only. This enhances traceability and makes the email look more legitimate and safe.
4. Keep away from using suspicious subject lines : Avoid throwing in random subject lines when sending Shopify emails. Sit down and take time to research some of the best and most catchy subject lines that do not look like a scam. You have to make sure that you explain the purpose of the email to the recipient using effective subject lines that don’t look suspicious.
5. Avoid Spam Trigger Words: Avoid using spam trigger words in the email content. Words that congratulate people for winning a particular item are more likely to be perceived as scams due to precedence. Inspect your text and get rid of any trigger words.
6. Keep in touch with your subscribers: You can also try sending regular Shopify emails to your subscribers. This ensures that the recipient becomes familiar with your email hence the lesser chance of your emails going to the spam folder.
7. Ask subscribers to whitelist your Email: You can also request your subscribers to add your email address to their whitelist. This way they will be able to receive your Shopify emails straight to their inboxes as opposed to the spam folder.

Through Domain Hosting:

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One crucial way of fixing the issue of emails going to spam is through your domain hosting account. Here is the procedure:

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1. Go to Online Store then click Domains
2. Click Manage and then Go to DNS settings
3. Select Add custom record and choose TXT record
4. Type @ in the Name section
5. In the TXT Value section, type v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com ~all then save your changes

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6. Click Actions to remove any other text records

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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What is a Shopify phishing email?

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A phishing email is an email that pretends to be a particular (reputable) organization or person in order to get you to reveal personal information. In most cases, the target is usually your credit card information or passwords. In this case, a Shopify phishing email will be someone pretending to be Shopify in order to get sensitive information.

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There are very rare occasions (almost none) where Shopify asks its subscribers to send personal information via email. This is usually done on the Shopify admin panel. Whenever you suspect any email purporting to be from Shopify, avoid clicking the links or sending any sensitive information. Most of the time, suspected phishing emails always appear in the spam or junk folder. 

Wrapping Up

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Email marketing is not just a very cost effective way to acquire new customers, but it also helps businesses save a lot of time and effort. With emails being so commonly used by everyone, one of the prime issues with it is spamming. Talking from business standpoint, customers get so many spam emails that it is highly likely sometime an actual email is mistaken spam or malicious.

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To make sure this never happens to you, we created this guide on why your Shopify emails are going to spam and how you can stop them. We tried to be as thorough as possible and listed all possible ways to stop emails from going to junk. 

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Feel free to reach out to us via marketing@logbase.io if you have any comments or suggestions. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter 📧 to receive notifications of our Shopify guides.

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People also read:

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• How to Change Shopify Store Name and Domain Name [2022]
• 8 Best Fraud Prevention App for Shopify [2023]