Seeing as I’ve recently started an email newsletter, I’ve been realllllly into all things email-related. I know. So exciting, right? I’m all about the email marketing tips and tricks, especially if they prevent my emails from landing in the spam folder.

Last week, I was watching Matt D’Avella’s Increase Productivity with These Email Hacks video:

As I was watching the video, I started implementing his Gmail filter hack. For newsletters I receive once a month or less, I keep them in my inbox. If I get something more frequently, I set up a filter to have it go to my Subscriptions label. (Watch his video if you’re curious on how to set this up.) Then in my free time, I can go through my email newsletters without them distracting the more important tasks in my inbox.

But…I came across a problem!

What if I’m expecting a regular, non-newsletter email?

Here’s the sitch: I get a newsletter from WSJwine which comes from customerservice@wsjwine.com. Well, whenever people use my WSJwine referral code (send me an email if you want the code lol), I also get an email from customerservice@wsjwine.com. I want this email to go to my inbox.

The problem is, if I filter emails from customerservice@wsjwine.com to go to my Subscriptions label, I will miss out on the referral emails, and in turn, will miss out on the discounted wine. We can’t have that, now can we? 🍷

So, that leaves me with two options:

1. Unsubscribe from the WSJwine newsletter altogether ☹️, or
2. don’t filter the newsletter at all and ruin my newly-created productivity hack ☹️

This could be happening to YOUR email list! Not good. In addition to this problem, there’s another problem that could pop up!

Your regular emails to clients could be filtered to the Promotions tab or marked as spam.

Gmail is smart, but also dumb, you guys. Let’s say you use your primary email address, hello@mydopebiz.com to start your email list. Gmail’s smart here – it might filter your newsletter to the Promotions tab. This is expected.

Now, if you directly send a client an email from hello@mydopebiz.com, Gmail might ALSO filter that to the Promotions tab, or worse, the spam folder 💀 This is NOT expected.

Your clients might be missing out on your email addresses simply because they are getting filtered away. We can’t have this happening to YOUR emails!

Alright, Emily, enough of your story. What’s your pro tip?!

Don’t use your primary email address as the “from” address in your newsletters!!

Instead, create a new email alias for your newsletter. For this month’s newsletter, I updated the from address to be contact@emilykimphotography.com. I’ve setup this alias so that all emails are forwarded to still hello@emilykimphotography.com, my primary email address. Problem solved 😎

Want to read more into this? These two articles have good info on the do’s and don’ts of email newsletter from and reply-to addresses:

• Why “From” names and email addresses are important
• From-Address Dos and Don’ts for your email newsletter

Need help with this or have more questions? Leave a comment or send me an email, and let’s chat…about email!! 😄