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Emails are landing in spam or junk

Track down the sender, authentication, and content issues that push Broadcasts into the junk folder.

Symptom​

A Broadcast sends successfully, but subscribers report it arriving in their spam, junk, or "Promotions" folder — or it never reaches the inbox at all. Open rates look unusually low, and the drop is often concentrated at one or two mailbox providers (for example, Outlook or Gmail).

Likely causes​

Ranked from most to least common:

  1. Missing or failing sender authentication — SPF, DKIM, or DMARC is not set up for your sending domain, so providers can't confirm the mail is really from you.
  2. Poor sender reputation — a new sending domain, a recent spike in volume, or past spam complaints have lowered the trust score for your domain or IP.
  3. Spam-triggering content — link shorteners, all-image emails, "spammy" phrases, oversized images, or a very high image-to-text ratio.
  4. List quality issues — sending to old, purchased, or unengaged addresses that generate complaints and hard bounces.
  5. Broken unsubscribe or missing physical address — required footer elements are absent, which providers penalize.

Fixes​

  1. Confirm authentication first. Verify SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are published for your sending domain. This is the single highest-impact fix — (confirm the exact domain-setup steps in your account, and involve your DNS admin).
  2. Warm up gradually. If the domain or send volume is new, increase volume over several sends rather than blasting your whole list at once.
  3. Clean the content. Send a test Broadcast to yourself, run it through your spam-check preview if available, add balanced text alongside images, and avoid link shorteners.
  4. Prune the list. Remove hard bounces and long-unengaged subscribers, and check the suppression list.
  5. Check the footer. Ensure every Edition has a working unsubscribe link and a valid physical mailing address.
  6. Re-test. Resend to a small seed group across major providers and confirm inbox placement before the full Broadcast.

Still stuck?​

If placement is still poor after authentication is confirmed and the list is clean, gather the affected Broadcast, the receiving providers, and any bounce or complaint messages, then contact your account's support team so they can review domain reputation and delivery logs.

Canonical terms: Author, Edition, Folder (Project Folder), Broadcast. See the Glossary.