Spam Testing

‍What is spam testing?

Reputable email inbox providers work diligently to fight and block spam, which keeps their users consistently happy, safe, and secure. In their attempts, they use certain spam filters to keep unwanted emails from falling into users' inboxes. To achieve this, emails go through a filter, where the provider checks the content of the email before allowing it to go through to the designated recipient.

Spam filters check various elements to gauge whether the content is spammy or legitimate. If your content meets the provider's specific requirements, your email will be allowed passage into the recipient's inbox. However, if it doesn't, the system will flag the email and either redirect it to the user's spam folder or prevent it from going through entirely. 

You can ensure your emails won't fall victim to spam filters if you conduct an email spam test. Through these tests, you'll be able to see how your emails would hold up under analysis by providers.

How does spam testing work?

You can conduct an email spam test using an email spam checker. This is a type of software solution that can check your email and see how it performs when going through a spam filter. In turn, the checker can determine whether inbox providers will label your emails as spam or let them through. The checker will accomplish this by looking at certain elements of your emails, including various technical elements and the email contents.

The right tool can successfully gauge your email's performance when it goes through the system. You'll also be able to measure certain metrics that help you identify and address any issues. For example, a spam checker could look for issues such as authentication problems, low-quality URLs appearing in email content, failures with infrastructure, and more.

A good spam checker will ultimately make it easy to check your emails and make sure you get the metrics you need to properly assess your emails. Based on the insights you glean from a spam test, you can take steps to improve engagement, fix certain coding errors, optimize your content, and take other necessary steps.

Benefits of spam testing

Spam testing offers numerous benefits that make this process crucial for any email campaign. The following are some of the specific advantages you'll see with a comprehensive spam test:

Increase your deliverability

The most obvious advantage of spam testing is the ability to maximize the deliverability of emails. If inbox providers see that your emails are valid and aren't attempting to spam recipients, your emails will have a better chance of landing in people's inboxes. In the meantime, you'll minimize instances when your emails wind up in spam folders or are blocked altogether.

Minimal complaints of spam

If you neglect to test your emails before sending them, there's a chance that people will mark them as spam, even if it isn't and passes through the spam filter. Spam testing will help make sure your emails only go to those who've subscribed to your emails. It will also make sure you're compliant with all relevant laws and regulations, including the CAN-SPAM Act and many others.

Improved reputation

Through spam testing, you can optimize the quality of your emails, driving more opens, clicks, and general engagement. If inbox providers see that people value your email content, they'll be more likely to enable your emails to reach the intended audience. As such, you'll see an improved reputation among both email providers and recipients.

Together, these benefits make spam testing one of the most important processes for all emails to undergo before sending them out. With the help of spam testing, you'll be able to avoid wasting time on email campaigns that fail to appeal to or even reach recipients.

How to perform a spam test?

You can easily perform a spam test by using the right checker tool before launching any campaigns. 

First, you will want to develop a seed list or use a solution that offers access to an international seed list. This list will include destinations for your emails to reach when testing them and indicate how your emails would perform when sending them to real subscribers. 

Once you've developed your seed list, you can use your spam checker to send emails to their respective destinations. In the process, you can see how your emails are performing and track key metrics to gauge the campaign's health. The tool should clearly indicate any potential issues that are keeping your emails from passing. Based on the data you collect, you can then take the necessary steps to optimize your email campaigns further.

What to do with the spam test results?

Once you've conducted a spam test using your checker, you can measure the results. The test will clearly indicate areas of improvement to help you determine which steps to take next. You'll see which elements of your emails are flagging spam filters and keeping them from reaching recipients. 

Keep in mind that all filters are different and give emails varying scores to indicate the level of spamminess your emails exhibit. If your emails don't hold up to scrutiny during these initial tests, this indicates your emails are likely to count toward spam. 

Your spam test should give you results according to different spam filters on some of the biggest platforms. For example, you may want to test your emails across platforms such as Yahoo, Gmail, Spam Assassin, Symantec Cloud, and Outlook 2013. If your emails pass all spam tests on each relevant platform, you can then proceed to send your emails to legitimate recipients with confidence.

If your emails appear to be spam to filters, you can optimize your campaigns to perform better. The right tool will help by making recommendations based on the data it collects. You can then build a checklist and go down each item until your emails perform optimally.

Over time, as you build more email campaigns and conduct repeated tests, you'll better determine how to bypass spam filters and streamline your emails' performance. Eventually, you won't need to worry about winding up in spam folders at all if you take the right approach to each email and campaign.

Some specific steps you can take to improve your emails and minimize spamminess include:

• Balancing images and text content
• Personalizing emails when possible
• Avoiding long content
• Keeping language from coming across as spammy
• Using a DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) signature, which adds a digital signature to all of your emails and enables verification
• Minimizing bounce rates
• Shortening URLs in emails
• Including all necessary information in subject lines, email bodies, and sender names
• Providing an unsubscribe link for people to opt-out if they want to
• Eliminating inactive addresses from email lists

The more experience you have optimizing your email campaigns, the easier it will be to do so and keep your emails in the inbox folder.

Use spam tests to get the best results from your emails

Spam tests are invaluable for your campaigns if you want to ensure that your emails reach the right people at the right time. Using the right solutions, you can properly run spam tests and take the right actions to optimize your campaigns.

To find out how Storyly can supplement your email campaigns with engaging web and app Stories, check out our innovative tool today and see what it can do for your marketing efforts.