Shopify email deliverability: How to keep your emails out of spam
You can have great products, a strong offer, and a well-designed email, but none of that matters if your customers never see the message. For Shopify stores, email deliverability is the foundation of email marketing. It determines whether your emails reach the inbox, land in spam, or fail to reach the recipient at all.
The good news is that most deliverability problems can be improved. By authenticating your domain, maintaining a healthy email list, sending relevant content, and monitoring the right metrics, you can give your emails a much better chance of reaching the inbox.
What is email deliverability?
Email deliverability is the ability of your emails to successfully reach your subscribers’ inboxes instead of being filtered into spam or junk folders. It is different from email delivery.
An email can be successfully delivered to the recipient’s email server but still end up in spam. Deliverability focuses on where the email actually lands, not simply whether the receiving server accepted it.
Think of the process like this:
Your Shopify store → Email service → Receiving server → Inbox or spam
At each stage, email providers evaluate different signals to decide whether your message looks trustworthy and useful.
Why are Shopify emails going to spam?
There isn’t one single reason an email gets filtered.
Usually, spam placement is the result of several factors working together, including:
- Domain authentication
- Sender reputation
- Email list quality
- Subscriber engagement
- Sending frequency and volume
- Email content
- Spam complaints and bounces
Shopify also notes that mailbox providers look at signals such as opens, clicks, bounces, spam complaints, and whether your sending domain is authenticated when deciding where future emails should go. This means that fixing one problem may not be enough if other parts of your email program are still sending negative signals.
1. Authenticate your Shopify sending domain
One of the first things you should check is email authentication. Authentication helps email providers verify that your store is actually authorized to send messages from your domain. Without proper authentication, your emails can have a harder time establishing trust with Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and other providers.
Three important technologies are commonly involved:
SPF
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) tells receiving email servers which systems are authorized to send emails on behalf of your domain.
DKIM
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds a digital signature to your emails so receiving servers can verify that the message is legitimately associated with your domain.
DMARC
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) tells receiving servers what to do when an email fails authentication checks. You don’t need to understand all the technical details to benefit from them. The important thing is to authenticate your sending domain correctly and keep the DNS records configured as required by your email platform.
Shopify provides domain authentication settings for Shopify Messaging, while third-party email platforms such as Klaviyo and Omnisend provide their own authentication setup.
2. Use a professional sending address
Your sending address also matters. Instead of sending marketing emails from a free personal address such as:
use an address connected to your store’s domain, such as:
or:
A domain-based address creates a more consistent sender identity and works together with your domain authentication setup. More importantly, your sending domain becomes part of your sender reputation. If you consistently send useful emails that subscribers engage with, you build trust over time.
3. Build a healthy email list
A large email list is not automatically a good email list. If you have 50,000 subscribers but a large portion of them are inactive, invalid, or uninterested, repeatedly emailing all 50,000 can hurt engagement and sender reputation. Shopify recommends maintaining good list hygiene and sending to people who have opted in and actively engage with your emails.
A healthy list should:
- Contain people who gave permission to receive marketing emails
- Remove or suppress hard-bounced addresses
- Avoid fake or invalid addresses
- Gradually reduce long-term inactive subscribers
- Make unsubscribing easy
And one rule should always be clear:
Never buy or rent an email list.
Purchased lists can contain invalid addresses, spam traps, or people who never agreed to hear from your brand. This can lead to poor engagement and more spam complaints.
4. Segment inactive subscribers
You don’t have to remove every subscriber who hasn’t opened your latest email. Instead, look at engagement over time.
For example, you could create segments such as:
- Engaged in the last 30 days
- Engaged in the last 90 days
- Customers who purchased recently
- Subscribers who have never purchased
- Subscribers who have not opened or clicked for several months
Then adjust your sending strategy for each group. For example, your most engaged subscribers can receive regular campaigns, while long-term inactive subscribers can enter a re-engagement or win-back campaign. If they still don’t respond after several attempts, you can consider suppressing them from future marketing sends.
This may make your list smaller, but a smaller audience that actually wants your emails can be more valuable than a large inactive list.
5. Send relevant emails instead of sending to everyone
Relevance has a direct connection with engagement. Imagine a customer who purchased running shoes from your store. Sending them an email about running accessories makes sense. Sending the same customer a random promotion for an unrelated product category may not. This is why segmentation and behavior-based automation are useful for deliverability as well as conversions.
You can segment customers based on:
- Purchase history
- Products viewed
- Previous email engagement
- Customer type
- Location
- Purchase frequency
- Product interests
Shopify recommends using customer segments to focus campaigns on subscribers who are more likely to engage rather than sending every campaign to your entire list.
Better targeting → better engagement → healthier sending reputation.
6. Keep your sending volume consistent
Suddenly changing your sending behavior can create problems.
For example, imagine your store normally sends:
5,000 emails per week
Then, during a major sale, you suddenly send:
100,000 emails in two days
A dramatic increase can look unusual to mailbox providers, especially if your domain has not previously handled that volume. Shopify recommends gradually increasing sending volume when necessary rather than making sudden jumps.
If you’re launching a new domain or increasing volume:
- Start with your most engaged subscribers.
- Send a smaller volume first.
- Monitor bounces and complaints.
- Gradually increase your audience.
- Maintain a consistent sending pattern.
This process is commonly called email warm-up.
7. Don’t send too many emails
Sending more emails does not automatically mean more sales.
If customers receive messages too frequently, they may:
- Ignore your emails
- Unsubscribe
- Delete messages without reading them
- Mark your emails as spam
Those actions can eventually hurt engagement and sender reputation.
Instead of asking:
“How many emails can we send?”
ask:
“How often can we send while customers still find our emails useful?”
Your ideal frequency depends on your audience and business model. A weekly newsletter may work well for one store, while another may need several targeted automated messages throughout the customer journey.
The key is to watch engagement and adjust based on your own audience.
8. Write emails that look natural and useful
Your email content also matters. Spam filters don’t simply look for a list of “bad words.” They evaluate many signals, while customers themselves can also decide whether an email feels unwanted.
Shopify recommends avoiding misleading subject lines, excessive punctuation, all-capital text, and emails that rely heavily on a single large image with little text.
Avoid:
🔥🔥🔥 HUGE SALE!!! BUY NOW!!!- Excessive capital letters
- Too many exclamation marks
- Misleading subject lines
- Huge image-only emails
- Broken links
- Unclear or deceptive CTAs
Instead:
- Write naturally
- Make the subject match the email content
- Keep the layout clean
- Use clear CTAs
- Give the customer something useful
You don’t need to make every email plain or boring.
The goal is simply to make your emails look like legitimate messages from a real business rather than aggressive bulk advertising.
9. Don’t rely entirely on images
A common ecommerce email mistake is designing the entire message as one large image. It may look attractive, but it creates several problems. Some email clients may block images. Screen readers may not be able to understand image-only content properly. And mailbox providers have less text context to evaluate.
Shopify recommends using optimized images while keeping emails focused and avoiding designs that contain one large image with very little text.
A better structure is:
Headline → Short copy → Product/image → CTA
This gives customers enough context even if images don’t load immediately.
10. Make unsubscribing easy
This might seem counterintuitive. You don’t want people to unsubscribe, so why make it easy? Because an easy unsubscribe is better than a spam complaint.
If someone no longer wants your emails but cannot find the unsubscribe link, they may simply click the “Report spam” button instead. Shopify recommends including a clear unsubscribe option and making the process straightforward.
Your email footer should make it easy for subscribers to:
- Unsubscribe
- Manage preferences
- Understand who sent the email
Don’t hide the unsubscribe link in tiny text or make customers search through multiple pages.
11. Monitor the metrics that matter
You cannot improve deliverability if you don’t monitor what’s happening.
Start with these metrics:
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Bounce rate | Whether emails are failing to reach recipients |
| Spam complaint rate | Whether subscribers are reporting your emails |
| Open rate | A useful engagement signal, but not a complete deliverability measurement |
| Click rate | Whether subscribers are interacting with your content |
| Unsubscribe rate | Whether your sending frequency or content may be causing frustration |
| Delivery rate | How many emails were accepted by receiving servers |
Shopify notes that a hard bounce rate above 2% can negatively affect deliverability, while its current guidance recommends aiming for a spam complaint rate below 0.1%. These numbers should be treated as warning signals rather than universal rules. Benchmarks can vary by industry, audience, and email platform.
Also remember that open rates aren’t perfect. Privacy features such as Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection can make open data less reliable, so clicks, purchases, complaints, and bounces should be considered alongside opens.
12. Check whether you’re actually landing in spam
A falling open rate does not automatically mean your emails are going to spam.
Your emails could also be landing in:
- Primary inbox
- Promotions
- Updates
- Spam
- Or failing to arrive altogether
These are different problems.
If you suspect deliverability issues, send controlled test emails to accounts on major providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook and check where the messages arrive. Omnisend also recommends using Google Postmaster Tools to monitor domain reputation and spam-related signals for Gmail traffic.
For larger email programs, dedicated deliverability tools can provide more detailed information about inbox placement and sender reputation.
Shopify email deliverability checklist
Before sending your next major campaign, run through this checklist:
Technical setup
- Authenticate your sending domain
- Check SPF/DKIM/DMARC configuration
- Use a professional domain-based sender address
- Check that DNS records are configured correctly
Email list
- Only email subscribers who have opted in
- Remove hard-bounced addresses
- Avoid purchased lists
- Segment inactive subscribers
- Run re-engagement campaigns before suppressing inactive contacts
Email content
- Use a clear subject line
- Avoid misleading copy
- Don’t overuse capital letters or punctuation
- Don’t rely on one large image
- Check every link
- Include a clear CTA
- Make unsubscribing easy
Sending strategy
- Keep your sending schedule reasonably consistent
- Avoid sudden volume spikes
- Start slowly when warming a new domain
- Prioritize engaged subscribers
- Monitor bounces, complaints, clicks, and unsubscribes
What to do if your Shopify emails are already going to spam
If your emails are already experiencing spam placement, don’t immediately send more campaigns to try to “fix” the problem.
Start with the basics.
Step 1: Check authentication
Make sure your sending domain is properly authenticated and that your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup is correct.
Step 2: Check your list
Look for hard bounces, old contacts, suspicious addresses, and large groups of inactive subscribers.
Step 3: Reduce your audience
Temporarily prioritize subscribers who have recently opened, clicked, purchased, or otherwise engaged with your brand.
Step 4: Review your content
Look for misleading subject lines, excessive promotional language, broken links, image-heavy layouts, and unclear CTAs.
Step 5: Monitor complaints and bounces
Look for sudden increases rather than focusing on one campaign in isolation.
Step 6: Rebuild gradually
If your sender reputation has been damaged, recovery takes time.
Focus on consistent sending, engaged subscribers, relevant content, and low complaint rates rather than trying to increase volume immediately.
Shopify notes that sender reputation is built over time through sending behavior and engagement, so deliverability should be treated as an ongoing process rather than a one-time technical fix.
Email deliverability vs. spam: What Shopify merchants should remember
It’s easy to think that email deliverability is simply about avoiding certain spam words. It isn’t. A healthy email program depends on several things working together:
Authentication proves who you are.
List quality shows that you’re sending to legitimate subscribers.
Engagement shows that people actually want your emails.
Content quality gives them a reason to interact.
Consistent sending helps establish predictable behavior.
Monitoring helps you catch problems before they become serious.
If one part is weak, the others may not be enough to compensate.
Final thoughts
Keeping Shopify emails out of spam isn’t about finding one magic setting or removing a handful of “spam words.” It’s about building trust with both your subscribers and mailbox providers.
Start with the technical foundation: authenticate your domain and use a consistent sender identity. Then focus on the audience itself by maintaining a clean list and prioritizing people who actually engage with your emails. From there, send useful content at a reasonable frequency, monitor bounces and complaints, and adjust your strategy when engagement changes.
Most importantly, don’t judge your email marketing by the size of your list alone. A smaller list of engaged subscribers who receive relevant messages can be far more valuable than a large audience that ignores everything you send.
For Shopify merchants, good deliverability is not just an email technical issue. It’s what allows all of your email marketing—welcome campaigns, abandoned cart recovery, win-back emails, product announcements, and promotions—to actually reach the people you’re trying to reach.