Avoid messages going to a client's spam or junk folder

Spam filters are intentionally evasive when it comes to sharing tips and tricks to get a message through. After all, if they told everyone how to bypass filters, spammers would be the first to implement those changes.

That said, there are a number of things you can do to help ensure your messages are consistently delivered to your clients' inboxes. While these aren't the only options and may not apply to all cases, these best practices are the best defense against getting filtered.

Don't use the same email address for client communication and marketing

One of the easiest ways to get on a spam list is getting marked as spam by your recipients, and some clients will inevitably see your marketing efforts as spam even if they've signed up for them. The best solution here is to have a different email address -- or even a different domain name -- for sending marketing messages to your clients.

Ask clients to mark messages as safe and add you to their address book

You've seen emails from companies of all sizes in the past asking you to add them to your address book. This, along with specifically adding the email address to their "Safe Senders" list or explicitly marking it as "Not Junk" are two of the most powerful tools to help the filters learn that your email messages are wanted and important. If you ask clients to do this in your signature, some will oblige, and this will help.

You can also check out this article from SendGrid on avoiding spam filters. Some of these things -- like providing a preference center to unsubscribe -- are already provided by TravelJoy. When in doubt, ask the team! 

Make sure you're not on a spam blacklist

If everything else is set up properly and your messages are still going to a client's spam folder, it is possible that your sending IP address is on a spam blacklist. 

At any given hour, thousands of people may be sending email through a single IP address owned by your email provider, meaning that one spammer can cause problems for many, many legitimate users. Unfortunately, neither the blacklist provider nor the email provider offer much help in these situations, and often note that sending IPs change often so the problem should go away on its own in a day or two.

You can check your sending IP against spam blacklists using a free service such as https://www.mail-tester.com.