The ESP / email marketing tool plays a role in deliverability, but it’s not the sole reason why emails land in spam.

Out of the hundreds of signals mailbox providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) use to decide if emails should go to spam or not, there are 5 main ones to pay attention to:

1. Mailing server IP (controlled by the ESP)
2. Email content (controlled by the sender)
3. Domain reputation (controlled by the sender)
4. Domain authentication (the ESP will give some “data” to be put into the sender’s DNS (domain name system); the sender needs to correctly input this “data”)
5. Subscriber engagement (controlled by the sender)

Out of the 5 main things, the ESP is only in control of 1. The other 4 are in the hands of the sender.

However, when emails go to spam, most people blame it on the ESP.

And rightly so — since they’re not well trained on the topic of email deliverability.

They might have heard or read a few tips here and there, but they don’t really understand the deep workings of deliverability.

One of the biggest myths regarding emails going to spam is: I can 100% prevent emails going to spam.

The truth is — there will always be emails going to spam, no matter if you’re sending a one-to-one email personally or using an ESP to send bulk emails.

Even the biggest and most reputable ESPs have emails landing in spam, guaranteed.

Emails from Google themselves have even landed in my Gmail spam folder. Go figure 🤷

There was also this one time where personal reply emails from me to my vendor landed in spam. Bear in mind that this was us exchanging emails back and forth — and Gmail decided that my reply emails should go to spam. What gives?

Here’s another reply email I got from a subscriber who replied to my email and yes… you guess it right — Gmail put it in spam too: