Why Your Best Offers are Ending Up in the Bin
You’ve spent all morning putting together a great offer for your customers. Maybe it’s a 20% discount for the quiet season, or a reminder to book in for their annual service. You hit send, wait for the phone to ring, and... nothing. Silence.
Then you check your own personal inbox and find your own business email sitting in the 'Junk' or 'Spam' folder. It’s incredibly frustrating.
I’ve seen this happen to dozens of Brisbane businesses—from landscapers in Carindale to boutique shops in Paddington. They think their email marketing isn't working, but the truth is, their customers aren't even seeing the messages. If your email goes to spam, it’s not a marketing failure; it’s a delivery failure. And if you aren't in the inbox, you aren't making money.
Most of what you read online about this is rubbish. People will tell you to avoid using the word 'Free' or to use fewer emojis. While that helps a tiny bit, the real reason your emails are being blocked is usually much more practical.
Here is what is actually going on and how you can fix it to start seeing more enquiries.
The 'Digital Passport' You Didn't Know You Needed
Think of every email you send as a person trying to get through customs at the airport. Google (Gmail) and Microsoft (Outlook) are the customs officers. Their job is to protect their users from scammers and junk.
If you show up without a passport, or with a passport that looks like it was drawn in crayon, they aren't going to let you in. They’ll throw you in the 'holding cell' (the spam folder) or just deport you entirely (block the email).
In the digital world, your 'passport' consists of three technical settings on your website's home base (your domain). You don't need to know how to code these, but you do need to know they exist so you can tell your IT person or web guy to fix them.
1. SPF: This tells the world exactly which 'post offices' are allowed to send mail on your behalf. 2. DKIM: This is like a wax seal on an envelope. It proves the email hasn't been tampered with since you sent it. 3. DMARC: This tells the customs officer what to do if an email looks like it’s from you but fails the first two tests.
Earlier this year, Google and Yahoo changed the rules. If you send more than a few thousand emails and you don't have these three things set up properly, they will start blocking you. We worked with a professional services firm in the CBD that saw their email platform costs skyrocket because they were paying for a service that was essentially sending messages into a black hole. Once we fixed these 'passport' settings, their booking enquiries jumped by 40% in a month.
Are You Using a 'Dodgy' Email Address?
If you are running your business using a @gmail.com or @bigpond.com or @outlook.com.au address for your marketing, stop.
You might be a legitimate local legend, but to a computer, you look like a spammer. You must use an email address that matches your website—something like yourname@yourbusiness.com.au.
Using a personal address to send bulk marketing is one of the fastest ways to get blacklisted. It’s also important to look at how you are managing your list. Sending the same generic blast to everyone on your list every single day is a mistake. I always tell my mates to focus on segmentation strategies so they are only sending relevant info to the right people. If you annoy people, they hit the 'Spam' button, and once enough people do that, Google will stop delivering your mail to anyone.
The 'Clean List' Secret to More Sales
I know it feels good to say you have 5,000 people on your email list. But if 2,000 of those people haven't opened an email from you in three years, they are actually hurting your business.
When Google sees that you are sending thousands of emails and nobody is opening them, they assume your content is junk. They start lowering your 'reputation.' It’s better to have a list of 500 people who actually want to hear from you than 5,000 who ignore you.
Every six months, you should go through your list and remove people who haven't engaged with you. It sounds counter-intuitive to delete potential customers, but it actually ensures that your active customers keep seeing your messages in their main inbox. This is a huge part of measuring ROI for your marketing. You want to pay for results, not for a big number in a database that doesn't turn into profit.
How Much Will This Cost to Fix?
If you’re worried about the cost, don't be. Fixing the 'digital passport' issues (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) usually takes a technician about an hour or two of work. If you have a local IT guy or a marketing agency, they should be able to do this for a couple of hundred dollars.
Compare that to the cost of losing a $2,000 job because a customer never saw your quote or your follow-up email. It’s the cheapest insurance policy your business can buy.
If you decide to do it yourself, most email tools (like Mailchimp or MailerLite) have a 'Domain Authentication' section. They will give you a few lines of text that you need to copy and paste into your website's settings. If that sounds like a headache, just pay someone to do it. It’s a one-time fix that pays for itself immediately.
What You Should Do First
Don't wait until your emails stop delivering entirely. By then, your reputation is already trashed, and it takes months to earn Google's trust back.
1. Test yourself: Send an email to a tool like 'Mail-Tester.com'. It will give you a score out of 10 and tell you exactly what is broken. 2. Check your 'Passport': Ask your IT person, "Are our SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records set up correctly for our marketing platform?" 3. Clean your list: Remove anyone who hasn't opened an email in the last 12 months. 4. Use a real domain: Make sure you aren't sending from a @gmail or @outlook address.
Look, I get it—you’ve probably heard marketing people talk about 'deliverability' and 'engagement' before and your eyes glazed over. But at the end of the day, this is about making sure that when you put in the effort to reach out to a customer, they actually see what you have to say.
Most Brisbane businesses are getting this wrong. If you get it right, you’ll have a massive advantage over your competitors who are still wondering why their 'Send' button isn't making them any money.
Ready to get your emails out of the junk folder and back into the hands of your customers?
At Local Marketing Group, we help Brisbane small businesses stop wasting money on marketing that doesn't work. We can audit your setup and get your emails landing where they belong: the inbox.
Contact us today at https://lmgroup.au/contact to get your marketing back on track.