How to Lower Your ConvertKit Spam Rate

Have you noticed a recent spike in your ConvertKit spam rate? Do you feel you're doing everything right, and this spam rate isn't justified?

Your Email Service Provider (ESP) and email etiquette may be at fault here.

We understand that a high spam rate can devastate any email marketer's confidence. Keep reading as we uncover possible reasons for your high ConvertKit spam rate and how to tackle them.

Table of contents

• What are spam emails?

• What is spam rate?

• Reasons for high ConvertKit spam rate

  • Not excellent deliverability rates
  • Possessing a poor sender reputation
  • Not setting up SPF and DKIM
  • Interacting with the wrong audience

• How to reduce the ConvertKit spam rate?

  • 1. Improve your sender's reputation
  • 2. Set up SPF and DKIM
  • 3. Interact with the right audience
  • 4. Use platform activity to send highly relevant content

• Go spam-free with Mailmodo

  • ✅ Expert consultation for deliverability
  • ✅ Help with domain warmup
  • ✅ We don’t tolerate spammers
  • ✅ Abundant resources on email deliverability
  • ✅ Our customer success team is always here to help

• Takeaways

What are spam emails?

When marketers send worthless emails in bulk without personalization in the hopes of getting a few clicks, they’re considered spam emails. Marketers who send spam emails don’t prioritize users. They just want to catch a few fish without putting in the effort to nurture them.

But we know you’re not a spammer and care about your customers. So why do ConvertKit, Google Postmaster, or email tracking tools you use show your spam rate as high? This may happen due to unknowingly exercising spam practices or issues caused by the ESP.

We have revealed the main reasons for your high ConvertKit spam in the upcoming sections. But before that, you’ve to be clear about what spam rate actually means. Let’s uncover that mystery first.

What is spam rate?

Spam rate is the number of people who marked your email as spam out of the total number of people who received that email. Confused? Here is an example.

Suppose you’ve got an email list with 500 subscribers. There is an upcoming holiday, and you decide to send them an email with holiday discounts. After you prepare your email and send it, if 5 people out of those 500 people marked you as spam, your spam rate would be 1% which is an acceptable level.

So coming back to your high ConvertKit spam rate, there might be many reasons why that is happening. Here are the likely reasons.

Reasons for high ConvertKit spam rate

Here’re a few common reasons why your ConvertKit emails may end up in spam.

Not excellent deliverability rates

The image above shows you a deliverability test that identifies the percentage of emails that end up in spam, go to inbox, or get lost. As you can see, ConvertKit delivered 81.44% of emails to the inbox. While that number isn’t bad, it can still be significantly better. And if it were high volume commercial emails instead of low volume test emails, that 14.54% of spam emails would’ve bought significant money if they were delivered to the inbox. This may be the hidden reason for the recent hike in your ConvertKit spam rate.

Read how SBNRI improved their email deliverability with Mailmodo, leading to a 16% increase in open rates.

Possessing a poor sender reputation

Similar to how people give you a social reputation based on your past actions, inbox providers also give a reputation to the sender's IP and domain based on their past actions. If a particular IP and domain had a history of spam, surely they’ll get a poor IP reputation and domain reputation. And no inbox provider will accept emails from such sources and direct them to spam. So poor reputation is another major factor in your ConvertKit spam rate.

Not setting up SPF and DKIM

Inbox providers need to know whether an email is coming from a legitimate source, so they use Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to check its authenticity. So if you don’t set SPF and DKIM, you’re indirectly telling inbox providers, “Hey, I’m not what I claim to be. Please put me in spam.” So if you don’t have SPF and DKIM set up, the hike in your ConvertKit spam rate is self-explanatory.

Interacting with the wrong audience

Suppose you’ve put two hours into a perfect email with nice colors, layout, and content for your awesome shoe products. But if the end-user is not interested in shoes, no matter how cool your email is, it’s all in vain. They’ll not interact with your email and, at worst, mark you as spam. So if you see irrelevant subscribers in your email list, you know why your ConvertKit spam rate is high.

How to reduce the ConvertKit spam rate?

Here are the steps you can take to reduce your ConvertKit spam rate.

1. Improve your sender's reputation

You can start by switching to a dedicated IP address from a shared IP address. Using a shared IP address is no different than living in a robber's house. You may be a good marketer, but spammers who send emails with the same shared IP as you will take its reputation downhill. So move away from a shared IP and switch to a dedicated one on which you have complete control of how its reputation is going to be.

Related guide: Dedicated IP Address vs. Shared IP Address - Which One Should You Use?

2. Set up SPF and DKIM

You already know the importance of SPF and DKIM from previous sections. So to set up SPF and DKIM, you need to generate their records through online tools such as Easy DMARC. Then you’ve to configure these records in your system and verify them.

3. Interact with the right audience

Your hours of effort will produce more results when you target the right audience. If you sell shoes, target shoe fans. If you sell cricket merchandise, don’t tell football fans to buy them; instead, target cricket fans. It’s all about who you know and who knows you.

4. Use platform activity to send highly relevant content

You may have gathered data about how your users view your product, which pages they checked out, and what features they’re interested in. So don’t let that research go to waste and use it to personalize emails so it’ll anticipate their interests.

Go spam-free with Mailmodo

We at Mailmodo do everything to maintain a very low spam rate for our customers by banning spammers, maintaining high-security standards, and more. Here is what you’ll get when you work with Mailmodo.

✅ Expert consultation for deliverability

Suppose you’re not seeing your desired email deliverability rates and don’t have in-depth knowledge about email deliverability. In that case, our experts will help you figure out your situation and will assist you in bettering your rates as quickly as possible.

✅ Help with domain warmup

Domain warmup is a practice of warming up your new domain by sending a small volume of emails. This helps inbox providers get to know your domain and won’t assume you as a spammer who has set up a new domain just to send a high volume of spam emails.

But domain warmup can be tricky to execute if you haven’t done it before. That’s where our experts will help you guide you through the process to ensure that you have a good head start with your new domain.

✅ We don’t tolerate spammers

We want only genuine email marketers to use our product. So if we find any user who receives consistent spam complaints or consistently follows any spam practices, we’ll block them from using our shared IP address so genuine users like you don’t have to suffer as a result.

✅ Abundant resources on email deliverability

It can be difficult to grasp email deliverability concepts and put them into action. That’s why we have developed resources for email marketers of every level to upgrade their knowledge and skills with our email deliverability resources. We also have a hub of email marketing resources that you can access for free.

✅ Our customer success team is always here to help

Finally, just shoot them at our customer success team if you have any issues. You can contact us for help via customer chat or by emailing at support@mailmodo.com, and we’ll get back to you in no time.

Takeaways

Don’t be discouraged by your current ConvertKit spam rate. All it takes to improve this rate is following a few simple anti-spam practices, and you’ll surely see a decrease in the spam rate.

Want to know what other reasons can give you a high spam rate? Then read our guide 9 reasons why your emails land in spam that’ll show you many more reasons for spam and strategies to deal with them.

If you want a complete ESP well optimized to reduce spam and a team that’ll always be there throughout your journey, Mailmodo should be your tool of choice. Sign up today or book a demo with us to enjoy all the benefits.