Article: 000006657
Updated: March 10, 2021
Learn why your emails go to Gmail’s Promotions tab and tips for landing in the Primary tab
Gmail introduced different inbox tabs, including the Promotions tab, to help improve deliverability and open rates, and to decrease spam complaints from their users. Gmail delivers emails to these tabs based on constantly changing algorithms that take variable data into account, including sender information, email content, and recipient engagement. There’s no need to fear, though! You can think of these tabs as additional inboxes. And not all Gmail users take advantage of the tabs — many disable them in favor of having a more traditional inbox where all emails are delivered to one place.
Why is my email delivering to the Promotions tab?
Benefits of the Promotions tab
Getting emails delivered to the Primary tab
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Tip: Check out our tips for how to avoid your emails going to the spam folder.
Why is my email delivering to the Promotions tab?
Gmail moves marketing and bulk emails, such as deals, offers, and other promotional messages, into the Promotions tab. Emails sent through Constant Contact typically end up here because we are an Email Service Provider (ESP).
Learn more: For help with Gmail and configuring your inbox on a desktop, Android, iPhone, or iPad, visit the Gmail Help Center.
Benefits of the Promotions tab
The good news is, people who use the Promotions tab in their email account frequently check here for emails from their favorite stores, online shops, and other businesses whose mailing lists they joined. So if your contacts are very engaged with your emails, they’ll know to check the Promotions tab to find your emails!
Getting emails delivered to the Primary tab
Gmail’s Primary tab includes all emails from people you know and any other messages that don’t appear in other tabs. Getting your email to land in a contact’s Primary tab is naturally hard to control — it’s all up to the recipient!
Moving an email to the Primary tab
Your contacts may decide to move you into their Primary tab by clicking and dragging one of your emails from the Promotions tab. By doing so, all future emails from you will be delivered to the Primary tab.
Click and drag email into Primary tab
Disabling tabs
Contacts may also disable these tabs altogether, allowing all emails to be delivered to the Primary inbox:
Click the Settings gear icon and then select See all settings from the drop-down.
Gmail settings drop-down
Click the “Inbox” tab. Then, uncheck the box next to Promotions and any other unwanted tabs to remove them from the inbox. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.
Select tabs to enable/disable
What you can do
Here are some things you can do to help your emails land in the Primary tab:
Ask your subscribers, perhaps in your Welcome Email, to add your From email address to their contacts. In Gmail, this can be done by hovering over the senders name in the top-left corner of the email, and then clicking “Add to Contacts.” Emails from a subscriber’s contacts always go to the Primary inbox.
Add sender to Contacts list
Personalize your email and address your contacts by name.
Personalization in an email
Write to your contacts as if they are your friends.
Personalized and friendly email content
Avoid using spam-like characteristics in your subject line.
Don’t have spelling or grammatical mistakes in your subject line or body of the email. Too many could land your email in the spam folder.
The bottom line: Send engaging emails and your contacts will open them no matter what tab they get delivered to!
Common things that trigger spam filters
Article: 000005649
Updated: September 17, 2020
What to avoid to keep your emails from being filtered as spam
Internet Service Providers use spam-blocking measures to sort through incoming mail and filter out messages that are identified as unwanted or as spam. Sometimes, however, these measures block legitimate emails. If you’re worried that your emails are being marked as spam, you can run a spam check to narrow down why your email is being blocked. While all spam filters are different, there are some best practices you can follow to minimize the possibility that your emails will be filtered out as spam.
Words and Phrases
Images
Links
Email Engagement and Sender Reputation
Sending Address
Duplicate Emails
Words and Phrases
In both the subject line and body of an email, there are certain words, phrases, and characters that can cause it to be sent to the spam folder. One instance may not be enough to cause the email to be filtered, but the more you have throughout your campaign, the greater the chances:
Words – “free,” “guarantee,” “opportunity,” “earn,” “million,” “Viagra,” “Xanax,” “sex,” “miracle,” “click,” “winner,” etc.
Phrases – “be amazed,” “your income,” “subject to credit approval,” “earn xxxx per week,” “check or money order,” “print out and fax,” “call now,” “act now,” “free trial,” “meet singles,” etc.
Uppercase – Writing in ALL CAPS
Punctuation – Excessive use of …, !!!, and ???
Links – Excessive use of “click here,” very long URLs, or links that direct to problematic websites
Symbols – Excessive use of $$, %, and other symbols
Images
Emails that use too many images, or are all one image, could trigger a spam filter. Using several lines of text to offset the images can help prevent this. Additionally, some filters are sophisticated enough to detect an image’s content, so it’s best to avoid any photos with explicit content.
Links
It’s common for spammers to make it look like you’re clicking on a link for one thing, but it’s actually a link to something else, and spam filters look for this. Even something innocent, like a text link that says “Please visit our website at www.mikeslandscaping.com”, but the URL portion is linked to “www.mikeslandscaping.com/home”, can be seen as spam.
Constant Contact emails are enabled with link tracking for your click reports, which changes them slightly. It’s best to avoid using the URL as the link text because it will never match the URL behind it and has a high likelihood of triggering a spam filter.
Email Engagement and Sender Reputation
Content isn’t the only cause of emails being filtered as spam. Your reputation as an email sender, along with your contacts’ engagement with your emails, can affect it. If your emails consistently have poor engagement, such as low opens or high bounces, filters may adapt to that and start delivering your email to the spam folder. Be sure to optimize your subject lines to help improve deliverability and open rates, and send relevant information to your contacts to improve engagement.
No matter how great your engagement is, however, if you’re consistently generating spam complaints or find that your domain is on a blocklist, you may start to see your emails get filtered as spam. Any email marketing you may have done before using Constant Contact could have affected your email sender reputation, especially if you weren’t able to track things like bounces and spam complaints. Make sure you’re following these best practices to reduce spam reports and improve your sender reputation.
Sending Address
In general, sending from a free email address (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) can cause an email to be delivered to the spam folder, depending on the domain’s DMARC policy. Although this is rarely an issue when sending through Constant Contact (we’ve taken measures to help prevent this), sending from your own domain is still considered a best practice and is the best way to prevent bounces caused by free email services. No matter what email address you send from, consider authenticating your email to help ISPs identify your email as legitimate and build your reputation as a safe sender.
Duplicate Emails
Avoid copying a sent email and sending it again to the same contact list with unchanged content and the same subject line as the first email. This can result in spam triggers. If you do resend an email to a contact list – if you’re sending a reminder email, for example – make sure to edit the subject line.
