The other day, a client sent me a message that went like this:
“My weekly check-in emails are dropping into spam, and some aren’t even getting delivered.”
He continued, “It’s frustrating the hell out of me because my clients aren’t getting the emails and it might affect retention. Can you have a quick look at what’s going on?”
He’s a coach who recently added a “weekly check-in” service for his clients.
I was baffled because his email address is clean and authenticated through DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, and all that fun stuff.
So, we hadn’t had deliverability issues with the emails I’ve been writing for him.
I went ahead and checked out the “weekly check-in” email.
Culprit found.
The email contained one huge image (which wasn’t relevant to the message), with the background also a coloured image… and a tiny bit of text at the end with a CTA.
Honestly, it looked like a massive billboard lol.
It’s not a hard-and-fast rule because every list and business is different, but an image-laden email with very little text is likely to get marked as spam — and sometimes not even get delivered.
So I got him to change the email to plain text to make the email more personal and to avoid spam triggers.
My gut tells me deliverability will shoot up.
I’ll report back with the results and let you know.
Have you struggled to get your emails read because they aren’t landing in your subscribers’ inboxes?
Email me at kiran@thekiransam.com and let me know. I read all replies.
Cheers,
Kiran
P.S. This doesn’t mean I’m against images in emails. Sometimes they’re needed to form a better selling argument to the message.
And when I do use them, I like to stick to an image-to-text ratio of at least 60% text and 40% image. But more often than not, plain texts are the way to go. It seems to have worked for me and my clients.