What is an email safelist?
As the name suggests, the term ‘email safelist’ refers to a list of email addresses that you trust. Emails coming from these addresses go straight to your inbox instead of your spam, promotions, or other secondary email folders (or getting blocked completely.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: How do I get my email address added to a recipient’s email safelist?
The easiest way to get your email address added to a recipient’s email safelist is to ask them to add you to their contacts. Doing so tells most email clients that you are a trusted sender and your emails should go to the recipient’s inbox.
If you are doing email marketing, however, you might have to ask your subscribers to take extra steps, such as adding you to their safe sender’s list, marking one of your emails as ‘not spam’, or creating a filter telling their email client to send emails from you directly to their inbox.
You can include instructions on how to do so in your first few emails to ensure that your recipients will receive all succeeding ones you send. Do not worry if you are not sure what email clients each of the members of your email list are using. You can just use a free email safelist instructions generator (also known as a whitelist instructions generator) to automatically create a step-by-step guide that applies to most popular email clients.
Question #2: How can I add an email address to my email safelist?
As we have seen in the previous section, the most straightforward way to add an email address to an email safelist is to add it to your contacts. If emails from that address still end up in any of your secondary folders, then you may need to take a couple of extra steps.
If you are using Gmail, for example, and an email you want to go directly to your inbox goes straight to your spam folder instead, you can open said email and click on ‘report not spam’. If said email goes straight to your promotions or other similar tabs, all you have to do is drag it to your inbox and Gmail will ask you if you want to direct all future emails from the same sender to your inbox instead.
Question #3: What are the benefits of having my email address in the recipient’s email safelist?
The biggest benefit of having your email address in the recipient’s email safelist is that all your emails to them would go directly to their inbox instead of any other folder.
This is particularly important if you are doing email marketing because it helps ensure that your emails not only get delivered, but also go to the recipients’ inbox instead of any other folder that never really gets checked.
Question #4: Is it enough to ensure email deliverability?
If you are doing email marketing, and email safelist is just one of the ways you can ensure email deliverability. You need to also take note of:
- Your reputation as a sender
- The health of your email list
- The content of your emails
Let us take a look at each one in more detail:
First, to improve your odds of having our marketing emails successfully delivered, you need to ensure that your IP address is not included in any major email blocklists. If it is, then you need to take the necessary steps to have it removed—or just take extra care not to be reported (or suspected) for sending spam or using shady list-building practices so you do not end up on these lists in the first place.
Second, you also need to make sure to keep incorrect, inactive, and otherwise invalid email addresses on your email list to a minimum so you can keep your bounce rate low. A high bounce rate may also be viewed as a red flag by mail servers and email blocklists.
Finally, you need to make sure your emails do not sound spam-like to minimise the risk of them being falsely flagged by your recipients’ email clients.