If you are sending an Incentive email to new subscribers, it's important that your subscribers receive this email successfully.
Unfortunately, this isn't always the case. Here are the most common reasons the Incentive email might land in the spam folder:
1. You are testing the form using an email address with the same domain as your sending address.
It's very common to start testing your form by adding your own email address to it. However, if your sending address is the same email as the one you just entered through the form, or if they share the same domain, it's common for the message to go to the spam folder.
This happens when your email server sees that it is receiving an email from itself, but it knows that it didn't send the message. Imagine opening your mailbox at home to see an envelope from yourself, but send from an unknown address. You would probably be suspicious!
That's exactly what happens when your email server sees a message come in from your email address, but from ConvertKit's IP address.
The good thing is that your subscribers will not see messages go to spam for this reason. The spam filtering is only happening because the sending domain matches the receiving domain during your test. We recommend testing with a different email address when wanting to see how your Incentive emails will perform with real subscribers.
2. You are sending from a freemail domain such as gmail.com, icloud.com, etc.
If you send from a freemail address, it's likely you'll see your messages land in the spam folder. For better results, send from your own domain that matches your brand. We talk more about how to do this and why it's important here: Why do I need my own domain to send email?
3. Your sending domain is using DMARC for authentication.
This is an advanced topic, so if you don't know what DMARC is and are sure you haven't added a DMARC record to your domain, feel free to skip to the next section.
If you are familiar with DMARC and think you might be using it to secure your domain, you'll want to be sure you've verified your sending domain within ConvertKit. Doing this will allow your ConvertKit emails to pass DMARC authentication. For more information on how to verify your domain, check out this article: Using a Verified Domain for Email Sending
4. Your sender reputation is damaged.
Once all of the technical pieces discussed above are taken care of, the biggest thing that determines whether your email lands in the inbox or spam is your sender reputation. To learn more about sender reputation, how it's determined, and how to improve it, check out this blog post: Sender Reputation -- Your Role in Improving Deliverability