How to Stop Emails Going to Spam in Gmail?

Imagine the countless conversations I’ve had over the years with people frustrated by their emails ending up in spam folders. As someone who’s led a marketing team in the cold emailing industry, I’ve seen this issue from every angle. 

Because of this, people trust my expertise and come to me for straightforward advice on this burning question: “How can I stop emails from going to spam?”

I have spoken with people from both sides of the issue: 

Senders whose emails end up in spam and hamper their cold outreach campaigns, 

and recipients missing out on important messages due to them getting junked in spam – It impacts everyone!

In this blog, I’ll explain Google’s email policies in simple terms and share the tested strategies and tips we’ve refined over the years to ensure your emails land where they belong – in the inbox. 

Stop Emails Going to Spam In Gmail – TOC

• What Does Google Consider As Spam?
• Step By Step Process: How To Stop Emails Going To Spam
• What Makes Your Emails Go to Spam?
• 9 Pro Tips On How To Prevent Your Emails From Going To Spam
• How Does An Email Mark As Spam Impact Your Email Campaign?
• Conclusion
• FAQs

What Does Google Consider As Spam?

In this section, I’ll share about different spam filters that Google uses to find spam and answer some of the most common queries about Google’s spam detection system that I have received throughout the years.

“According to Google, users don’t want to receive unsolicited, dangerous, or unwanted irrelevant messages.” If any of these conditions are observed in an email, Google will mark them as spam. 

Spam is caught by Google’s spam filters. Let me share how many types of spam filters Google has and what gets checked in that filter. 

Types of Spam Filters

Now let me reveal to you the top 2 questions I receive regarding Google spam filters.

From the hundreds of questions, these are the most common and frequently asked questions that people ask me about email deliverability.

1. What Factors Does Google Consider While Marking An Email As Spam?

Google considers signals from one or more factors, such as

• IP address,
• domains,
• subdomains,
• sender authentication status,
• emails received after unsubscription requests,
• empty email content, 
• and user inputs. 

These are called Google security warnings.

2. How Will Google Improve Spam Filters In The Future?

Google is constantly working to improve spam filters because, many times, even bulk senders send genuine messages without the intention of harming the user.

To help them, Google will apply personalized spamming, which could solve this issue. So, this is what Google plans to do to improve the spam filters. 

Step By Step Process: How To Stop Emails Going To Spam

This section will answer email recipients’ “How to stop incoming emails going to spam?” and receive their important messages in their inbox.

(Email senders can also take notes, and I’ll tell you after the section how you can do the same – keep reading) 

There are 2 ways you can stop emails from going into spam.  

1. Report as Not Spam
2. Create a Filter

1. Report Emails as Not Spam

One simple way of not landing in spam is manually marking the email as “Not Spam” in your Gmail. 

You can do it by following these steps…

1. Log In To Gmail
2. Go To The Spam Folder From The Left Side Panel
3. Select The Email
4. Open The Email
5. Click on the top button and “Report Not Spam.”

Done. Your email will now be moved to the primary inbox. 

For Email Senders: If you are facing this issue while sending emails, you can ask your recipient to mark you as Not Spam so you can receive your emails using any other communication channel or send a specific email for this purpose only.  

2. Create a Filter

The second option is to create a filter in Gmail. This helps keep all future emails from that particular domain and similar domains out of the spam folder. There are 2 ways to do it. 

1. Open the email for which you want to create a filter. 
2. Click on the three dots in the top right corner.
3. Click on the option “Filter message like this.”

4. The from section will automatically select the domain you want to select. 
5. Set up your filter parameters from the sender, subject, keywords included, keywords that should not be there, size of the email, and attachments. 
6. Click on the “Create Filter” button. 
7. Tick the box that says “Never Send It To Spam,” and you can also tick “Apply filter to the matching conversation.” 
8. Click on “Create Filter”. 

9. Another pop-up will appear after the click.
10. Tick the box that says, “Never send it to spam.”
11. You can also tick, “Also apply the filter to the matching conversation.” (This will keep similar domains also out of spam, AKA secondary domains)

The second method is the same, but it is just for the times when you do not have an email directly on the top. 

You can just follow these steps to create a filter. 

1. Log into Gmail
2. Go to the “Settings” tab (Top right gear sign)

3. Click on “See All Settings.”

4. Switch to “Filters and Blocked Addresses” Tab

5. Click on “Create a New Filter.”

6. From: Enter the domain you want to keep out of the spam folder (from here, we follow the same steps as above)

Read This: How to Create Rules to Filter Your Emails By Gmail. 

What Makes Your Emails Go to Spam?

If you are a sender, this section will solve your long-due question, “Why are my emails going to spam?”. 

Because, of course, after putting a lot of effort into creating an email campaign, seeing your efforts sit in the spam folder affects your ROI on cold outreach and demotivates you and your team. 

I’ll detail each possibility, what is covered, and how to overcome it in this section. 

• Spammy Words
• Unclear Email List
• Authentication Lapses
• Sending History
• Too Much HTML Content
• Spam Complaints
• Misleading Sender Information
• Adding Spammy or Harmful Website Links

1. Spammy Words

If your email contains words that are majorly used by people who bomb users with salesy and non-relevant or promotional stuff, Google will most probably mark the email as spam. 

Google does this by detecting a pattern of words used frequently in your emails. So, stop sounding pushy or refrain from using words like,

• Free
• Sale
• Offers
• Discount
• Best prices
• Clearance
• Be your own boss
• Expect to earn
• Get paid
• No credit card

There are many more words in the list of Spam words, and Google keeps getting more sophisticated day by day to track these patterns. 

2. Unclear Email List

While building the email list of ideal prospects, sometimes you forget to remove the emails that are not responding, getting bounced, or where you have already contacted enough. 

An uncleaned or unsegmented email list harms email deliverability and, hence, the sender’s reputation for your domain. 

Google considers a low sender’s reputation to be one of the factors for marking an email as spam. 

Good Read: 20 Best email companies to buy email lists. (Clean and Safe)

3. Authentication Lapses

If you’re using your own domain to send out sales emails, make sure you’ve added authentication records.

Google has made it compulsory for senders who send 5000 or more emails in a day to have all the authentication records clear. 

Email service providers use domain authentication records to identify and authenticate emails coming from your domain so they know the domain owners are actually sending the emails.

Emails without authenticated domains are considered spammy and malicious and filtered into the spam folder. You need to add three authentication records to your domain: DKIM, DMARC, ARC, and  SPF records.

Important to Know: Learn everything about email deliverability with this guide.

4. Sending History

New IP addresses should be warmed up when using a dedicated IP address. Gmail temporarily blocks new IP addresses for the first 2-24 hours. A few emails are then delivered to the inbox to check the recipient’s reaction. 

If this initial test results in a high complaint rate, most future emails will likely be categorized as spam. In contrast, if recipients click “This is not spam,” Gmail will consider the address safe for inboxing.

5. Too Much HTML Content

HTML content is considered non-human by spam filters. So, if you have too much HTML content in your emails, the chances of getting marked as spam increases. 

If you write yourself, there’s no issue, but if you take help from tools to write your emails, make sure you add plain text. 

Did You Know: Saleshandy users can send plain text emails to prevent their emails from being filtered as spam by the ESPs? 

6. Spam Complaints

Receiving spam complaints from the receivers is one of the top reasons ESPs consider all the current and future emails sent by a domain to be spammy. 

Spam complaints can result from poor subject lines, misleading “From” sections, too many email links, or inappropriate language. 

All of the above reasons can make the reader consider you as spam and raise a spam complaint against your domain. 

Always make sure to track spam complaints. They can hamper not only the main domains and ongoing email campaigns but also your future campaigns, as Google will also put all similar emails in the spam folder. 

7. Misleading Sender Information

Your From section is your identity for the readers. So make sure your name and your business are clear to the receivers from the start. 

Adding too many numbers, characters, and wrong information could mislead the readers, making them believe it is a spam email. 

This might lead them to mark your email as spam, increasing your spam complaints. 

8. Adding Spammy or Harmful Website Links

Adding too many links is harmful to the emails anyway. However, if you send links to dangerous or spammy websites, Google will put that email in the spam folder. 

So, double-checking the quality of the links you attach to your emails is good before sending. 

9 Pro Tips On How To Prevent Your Emails From Going To Spam

In this section, we will learn about how to make sure an email doesn’t go to a spam folder.” These tips will help you overcome landing your emails in spam. 

1. Warming Up Emails

This tip is for people who send emails in large numbers, such as sales professionals, marketers, recruiters, or similar professionals who have to send multiple emails as part of their work. 

Always used warm-up emails. Why? When you send emails from a new email address, Google is still confused about whether it’s a legitimate email or if some spammer created it.

So, when you gradually increase the number of emails sent in a day, Google considers this sending pattern a genuine user and doesn’t mark their emails as spam.

Note: We recommend not sending more than 50 from a single domain in a day. However, you can send the same email using a secondary email – explained in the next point.

2. Using Secondary Domains

Secondary domains are similar variations of your original domain. For example, If your original email address is,

Secondary emails make it easy for your customers to relate to you. At the same time, ESPs consider them as different emails. 

This ensures your emails avoid spam filters, as Google only flags the same content as spam if it comes from the same domain.

Pro Tip: Always use professional domains, such as .COM, .CO , .UK, and similar. Hackers or spammers use unprofessional-sounding domains, as per popular belief.

3. Personalized and Relevant Content

Let me explain how to tackle both aspects. 

Personalization

1. Subject Lines: Make sure your subject lines are short, to the point, and at the same time, intriguing enough for the reader to open them. You need to understand the psychology of your users to crack the code of writing the perfect subject line. 

2. Email Body Content: Well, if you are writing emails 1:1 then you can write the whole personalized email by yourself. 

But if you are doing this to achieve a target and sending many emails a day, personalizing everything manually is not possible for you. This is where you can use an email personalization tool to save time.

For example, If you use Saleshandy, you can write human-like cold emails using their feature like 

• Merge tags
• Variable tags
• Spintax
• A/Z testing

Relevancy

Spammy Content: Be very careful while choosing the words of your email content. You can check the spammy words content list I attached for you above. 

Also, use fewer AI words to prevent your emails from sounding like robots. 

Write Content That Encourages To Reply: Your content should have an action item for the readers, which we also call a CTA (Call To Action). 

What having a good CTA does is, it increases the replies on your emails, signaling the ESPs that you are a genuine sender. Hence preventing your emails from landing in spam. 

4. Test Your Emails

Very important but not possible using the normal Gmail setup. Testing your emails or your emails could save you from making any errors. 

You can see how the receivers will see your email, and you can even optimize the content if it isn’t convincing enough in the test version.

To do this, you will need to use a cold emailing tool where you can draft your email and click on the check preview button. 

Note: If you don’t want to test, you can also see an email preview just on the right side of the email in Saleshandy to keep an eye on while drafting the perfect email. 

5. Ensure Authentication Protocols Are Met

Google has announced that after February, 2024 every email sender who sends more than 5000 emails a day has to have the authentication records clear before sending emails.

This does not mean you can skip this if you are sending less than that. I highly advise you to complete it. 

If you are using cold emailing to keep long-term output goals, this step will secure your domains and give you the assurance you need to go ahead with confidence. 

6. Monitor Your Sender’s Reputation

Your sender’s reputation can suffer for many reasons, such as an increased bounce rate, being marked as spam, low engagement rates, and more. 

Keeping an eye on this number and constantly cleaning your email list can save your sender’s reputation big time. 

7. Use The Right Email Client

This is recommended to people who want to send many emails a day. 

All the good practices mentioned above demand time and effort, and they are too personalized, which is not possible when working at scale. 

This is where you take advantage of technology and use a cold emailing tool, like ours, that helps you automate the whole process and make sure your emails land in the inbox every time. 

How could the right email help?

Remember email blacklists? Well, blacklists also store spammy and promotional IP addresses, apart from addresses and sending domains. 

Your IP address when sending your message depends on which email client you use. If you send emails in bulk, they will land in spam as they are shared among many senders.

Apart from this, for many reasons, emails landing in spam folders are a big issue that cold emailing tools have been tackling and overcoming for years.

With years of experience, we at Saleshandy are known to deliver quality results and ensure excellent email deliverability with our advanced Features.

Features like, personalization features, Unlimited email accounts, automated campaign workflows, and Highly detailed graphical reports to analyze the effort. 

8. Don’t Get Into Blacklist

This goes without saying. Getting marked in someone’s blacklist directly puts your emails in spam. 

While there is no automatic way to remove your name from the blacklists, the manual efforts are worth it for the long-term output. 

By directly reaching out to the people who blacklisted you and asking them to remove your name from the list, you can save your future campaigns. 

9. Ask Users

This is similar to the technique we discussed in the above section (linking in case you missed it) for preventing emails from going to spam in Gmail.

You can ask your prospects to mark your emails as “Not Spam” or set up a filter to ensure your emails stay out of the spam folder. 

How Does An Email Mark As Spam Impact Your Email Campaign?

Of course you know how your emails landing in spam could impact your email campaigns. But there are more places where this can impact. 

Let me note down a few of them for you…

• Low Brand Trust And Credibility
• Impact On Future Campaigns
• Reduced Deliverability Rates
• Reduced Return On Investments For Outreach Efforts
• Legal Risks

Conclusion

In a few words, to keep your emails out of the spam folder, you have two options:

• Mark them as not spam.
• Take preventive steps.

Preventive steps are always what you should do if you are doing this for a business. So, using a cold emailing tool, you can, 

• Improving email deliverability.
• Writing relevant and useful email content.
• Tracking key metrics like Engagement rate, bounce rate, And sender reputation.

These practices ensure your emails stay out of spam folders from the start. 

FAQs

1. What are the most common reasons for email landing in spam?

Some common reasons for email landing in the spam folder are:

• Usage of spam trigger words
• Promotional subject lines
• Too much HTML content in the email
• Not following the laws
• No unsubscribe link

Unsubscribe using the link or tab at the top of the email.

• Domain reputation is not good
• Your recipients marked the email as spam
• Using link shorteners

2. What are Spam Filters?

Email Service Providers (ESPs) put spam filters in place to stop their subscribers from receiving inappropriate and low-quality emails. They would reach your primary inbox if spam filters were not in place, ruining everyone’s email experience.

3. How does Gmail’s spam filter work?

Gmail uses a combination of AI and machine learning in its spam filter. It checks the reputation of your email-sending domain, the content of your email for any malicious links or spammy words, and the recipient’s action on your emails.

4. How can I prevent my emails from going to spam in Gmail?

To prevent your emails from going to spam, ensure you’re an authentic sender, avoid using spammy words or links in your email content, and monitor user engagement with your emails. Using a cold email tool like Saleshandy can help you with it.

5. How does spam affect my email campaigns?

When your emails go to spam, it can drastically affect your email deliverability. Your emails and follow-ups may not be read, slowing down your sales cycle and impacting your bottom line.

6. What are Spam Emails?

Spam emails are emails sent to users that are either harmful or non-relevant to them. They could be offers users don’t want, or they could be spammers sending many harmful links to the users.