How to Lower Your SendGrid Spam Rate

Landing in the spam is the last thing an email marketer wants to happen. It hurts your deliverability and credibility.

Although the Email Service Providers (ESPs) take precautions to reduce the spam rate for their clients, it can still happen. And if you noticed your SendGrid emails landing in spam, we'll show you why it happens and how to reduce it and lower your SendGrid spam rate.

Table of contents

• What are spam emails?

• What is the spam rate?

• Reasons for high SendGrid spam rate

  • Sending emails with blocked IP addresses
  • Not setting up SPF and DKIM
  • Not having great customer support
  • Targeting the wrong audience
  • Not personalizing content by using platform activity

• How do you reduce SendGrid spam?

  • 1. Setup a dedicated IP address
  • 2. Set up SPF and DKIM
  • 3. Use quick support features
  • 4. Target the right audience
  • 5. 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?

Spam emails are like invitations to a random party you didn't know and asked for. They're sent to get a few clicks here and there without adding any real value.

But we know that you're not a spammer and don't want to be represented as one. But unfortunately, inbox providers can put genuine email marketers like yourself in spam folders due to issues with ESPs that become a reason for the high SendGrid spam rate.

What is the spam rate?

Spam rate is the number of people who reported you as spam out of the total number of people who have received your emails. So if 100 people received your emails and 5 of them reported you as spam, your spam rate would become 5%.

The industry acceptable spam rate is below 0.1% or 1%. That means, out of the thousand emails you send, 10 emails at maximum can be marked as spam. If it is anything more than that number, your spam rate isn’t acceptable and you should identify the core reasons and improve them.

Luckily, you don’t have to do any research as we have already laid out a few common reasons for SendGrid spam. Let’s discuss what they are.

Reasons for high SendGrid spam rate

Here’re a few common reasons why your SendGrid emails may end up in spam. These are real issues faced by SendGrid users, and the chances of you facing these issues are high. So let’s discuss what they are.

Sending emails with blocked IP addresses

Poor IP reputation is a major reason for ending up in spam, and SendGrid users have reported how inbox providers have blocked SendGrid’s IP addresses. This happens with a shared IP where a few bad marketers spam people and other marketers using the same IP will be affected. If ESPs don’t have strict rules about spam users, these issues will keep occurring.

Not setting up SPF and DKIM

SPF and DKIM are mechanisms that verify the authenticity of the emails. These help inbox providers verify whether the email is sent from where it is claiming to be from. And if you don’t set up SPF and DKIM for your email system, that becomes a red flag for inbox providers.

Not having great customer support

Although this is not a direct cause of spam but can delay the process of resolving your issues. If customer support doesn’t respond in an adequate time, inbox providers will keep seeing your emails as spam, and you’ll require more time to recover. So great customer support can make a world of difference and users have complained about SendGrid not having great customer service.

Targeting the wrong audience

It’s not wise to have cricket fans on your email list when your target audience is football fans. You’ll only be marked as spam if you send football news to cricket fans. So targeting the wrong audience with irrelevant content will just hurt your marketing efforts.

Not personalizing content by using platform activity

If you know how your users have interacted with your platform and not using to personalized content of your emails, you’re missing out. Everyone will not be interested in the same features of your product. If you don’t send highly relevant content, eventually, they’ll stop engaging and may mark you spam.

How do you reduce SendGrid spam?

Follow these steps to reduce your SendGrid spam rate.

1. Setup a dedicated IP address

If you're serious about decreasing your spam rate, setting up a dedicated IP address can be one of the best things you can do. It helps you have complete control over its reputation. And if good email etiquette is an integral part of your email campaigns, you can see a significant decrease in your SendGrid spam rate after switching to a dedicated IP address.

Also Read: Dedicated IP Address vs Shared IP Address - Which One Should You Use?

2. Set up SPF and DKIM

As you learned previously, SPF and DKIM are trust factors that inbox providers use to identify legitimate senders. So if your goal is reducing spam, you must set up these trust factors for your domain and you'll see a reduction in your spam rates.

3. Use quick support features

Slow customer support can be frustrating but there are things you can do to speed things up.

• If available, use live chat instead of email communication. It can take a while to reach back via email, but live chat can answer your queries instantly.

• Be descriptive about your issue. Tell them your situation in detail so they can assist you without a lot of back and forth communication.

• Try searching through their help guides to see if your issue has already been resolved.

4. Target the right audience

Build a targeted email list in your niche and send relevant content. Maintaining a sunset policy will also help you find unengaged users and remove them and only keep your true fans on your email list.

5. Use platform activity to send highly relevant content

Use the user data you have and use it to personalize the content of your emails. If you notice a user who is constantly using a certain feature, you can send them tips about how to use that feature better. If someone has left without purchasing, you can send them an email offering discounts.

Go spam-free with Mailmodo

We at Mailmodo do everything we can 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

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

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

✅ 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 so you can 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

We know that it can be difficult to grasp the concepts of email deliverability 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, if you’re having any issues, just shoot them at our customer success team. 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

A high spam rate can be frustrating as it puts a dent in the efforts of email marketers. If you’re also a victim of a high spam rate, just follow the steps mentioned above and you can be assured that your spam rate will significantly improve.

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.