Always remember: spam is a state of mind

Just about weekly, somebody reaches out to me with something like this: Help! Our email marketing campaigns are going to the spam folder. I read your advice, so I've implemented SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and that didn't fix it! You told me that would fix it! What gives? Why did you lie?

Thus, here is your semi-regular reminder that making sure your mail is not spam is not ONLY about compliance with technical requirements. Here are five reasons why spam is a state of mind, and not just a technical check:

1. What constitutes spam is a matter of personal preference. Not just subject to technical or legal classification. While anti-spam laws and various sender requirement guides define spam in various ways, it is the recipient's subjective reaction to the email messages you send them that determines whether or not your mail is wanted -- whether or not your message is spam.
2. What is spam to one person may be valuable to another. This statement might be more accurate if we were to transpose it: What is valuable to one person (you, the sender), might be low value spam to another (the recipient). What you think matters little; what the recipient thinks matters much more.
3. Intent doesn't override perception. Even a permission-based, well-targeted marketing message can be seen as spam if it is irrelevant, ill-timed, badly branded, or otherwise unwanted. And even worse, if you lack permission, you're even further away from being able to make that message wanted, in the likely perception of, in the eyes of, that recipient.
4. Control lies with the user. The power to define messages as spam or not spam rests with the recipient, and increasingly with machine learning systems (like Gmail's spam filtering), which are trained on individual user behavior.
5. Mailbox providers care greatly about delivering wanted mail (only). And they use signals and feedback to determine wanted versus unwanted. They count "this is spam" reports (and "this is not spam" reports). They note low or high engagement. The look to both active and passive data points to inform their understanding of what they think their users want, and they adjust their spam filters accordingly.

And so, those mailbox providers -- Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Comcast and so many others -- intentionally block many millions of fully technically compliant messages every day. Senders can, and often do, get all the technical bits right, without getting the "wanted" bit right, and they get blocked for it, and the mailbox providers aren't doing this by accident.

Thus, if you're still going to the spam folder, and you're passing all the technical checks, it's time to pause and review. Your mail is likely being perceived as unwanted. This is rarely the mailbox provider's fault. It's much more likely that it's on you to fix.

So what are you doing to make it right? Are you ensuring that you have clear permission before mailing? That you're not overwhelming or surprising recipients? What can you do to better drive engagement via compelling content and sunsetting inactive subscribers? These are things that you still have to think about, and get right, if you want to get to the inbox.

Never forget that implementing SPF, DKIM and DMARC, doesn't absolve you or exempt you from spam considerations.