How does email spam testing work?

Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools for growing your sales, but it only works if you end up in your prospect’s inbox. The last thing anyone wants is for their emails to end up in the spam folder.

If you want to preemptively identify issues with your emails and ensure they end up in the inbox, you might want to start spam testing your emails.

What is email spam testing?

Email spam tests are a quick and easy way to check if your email will end up in the spam folder before you send it to your list. These tests will identify any potential issues with your email that might trigger a spam filter, which would prevent your emails from being delivered or end them up in spam.

Spam testing services help ensure that your email content (the words in your emails) and elements (images, code, and hidden elements) are all up to the standards for modern spam filters. They also check for potential deliverability issues, like a blacklisted IP address, poor sending reputation, or lack of proper authentication.

Most services will also provide you with feedback, allowing senders to modify their email to avoid the spam folder before sending it out. 

How does an email spam test work?

Spam tests work by checking the content and information in an email sent to a spam testing email address - usually referred to as a “seed email” or “seed list”. Once the testing service receives the email to its seed address, tests will automatically be run to flag any issues that need correcting. 

When running an email spam test, these tools will review your email content, the source of the email, authentication, and other issues that may cause your email to end up in the spam folder. 

Spam testing services will then provide you with feedback on these specific elements, oftentimes in terms of a spam score, to help you correct these issues before sending the email to your main list. 

After making any changes to your email content to address issues that were identified, you can re-test the email to ensure the changes worked, and then send the email to your list. This kind of testing and iteration gives business owners and email marketers the best opportunity to land in the inbox. 

What do spam tests check?

Spam tests check almost everything that can impact your email’s deliverability. Generally, this falls into a few categories: Spammy content in the email, the sender’s reputation, authentication, and legal requirements. 

Spammy content or words

Most spam tests will catch issues with your content that looks similar to spam emails. Certain words and phrases can cause your emails to go to spam, such as:

• “Free” or “100% free”.

• Financial claims, such as “make $10,000”, “be your own boss”, “work from home”, etc.

• Words like “inheritance” or “you’re a winner” .

• Certain personal or relationship phrases, such as “near you”, “XXX”, “meet singles”, etc.

• Common marketing phrases, such as “click here”, or “open now”.

The list of these words and phrases is extensive, which is why it’s best to use a spam testing service to check for them. 

Spam checkers will also check for excess use of symbols, such as exclamation marks or dollar signs. Using too many images, unpersonalized content, or lots of “ALL CAPS” can also be flagged by these services. 

Blacklists, poor sender reputation, and authentication

Spam test will also check your sending email address and IP address to check for any issues. If your sending IP address is on a blacklist, a spam test will let you know. You’ll also be notified if your domain or subdomain has a poor reputation, or if you don’t have proper authentication protocols set up for your emails.

Legal requirements

In the U.S. and many other countries, bulk email senders are required to include certain content in their emails. These requirements include: having an “unsubscribe” link in your email that is easily accessible by the user, including accurate “From” and “reply to” email addresses, only sending to opted-in email addresses, and more.

If your spam test flags any of these issues with your email, you’ll want to fix them before sending to your list.

Sometimes issues like a poor sender score don’t have a quick fix, and can only be repaired with consistently good sending practices over a long period of time. Be sure to consistently monitor your sender reputation, and make efforts to improve it as you send out more emails. 

How can I run a spam test?

Testing your emails for deliverability issues before sending them to your core list is critical to the success of any email marketing campaign. 

One of the best ways to test for spam is through an email tester. This works great for adhoc tests but to test at scale a seed list through a service like InboxAlly can be your best friend. From within our tool you can test inbox placement across multiple mailbox providers before sending it to your list. Once your setup is validated and content honed, use seed engagement to help ramp up, improve, or maintain deliverability throughout your campaign.