How to ask subscribers to whitelist your address

Things in the email world keep changing as email service providers (ESPs) improve and enhance the way subscribers are able to use and sort their emails. If you’re an email marketer your goal is to ensure that your emails land in a subscriber’s inbox and don’t go to a junk or spam folder.

With the addition of tabbed inboxes, your campaigns could wind up in folders where you don’t want them to land (like the Promotions Tab in Gmail). ESPs are frequently updating the artificial intelligence they employ to improve how emails get automatically sorted but you can actually ask your subscribers to help you get in the inbox through whitelisting.

Whitelisting is a fantastic way to get your email campaigns into your subscribers’ inbox - meaning all your hard work won’t go unnoticed due to campaigns landing in other places of the subscribers’ inbox.

This isn’t an article that’s just for email marketers, it’s a how-to article for subscribers too. We’ll show you how you can whitelist emails from your favourite brands and business to ensure you always stay up to date with communication from them.

What does whitelisting mean?

Whitelisting is simply the process of adding an email address to your safe sender list, essentially adding that email address to your email address book.

Whitelisting is beneficial to email marketers as well as subscribers. From an email marketing perspective whitelisting can help you reach more of your audience and in turn reach more of your specific email campaign goals. For a subscriber, whitelisting makes it easier for subscribers to direct where emails land in their inbox and therefore control how messages get routed to them.

Benefits of asking subscribers to whitelist your address

We’ve already mentioned that whitelisting is beneficial to both subscribers and email marketers, but let’s highlight some of the main benefits of implementing this email tactic:

• Whitelisting improves email deliverability as it sends signals to the email service providers that you’re a reputable sender
• There is less chance for a subscriber to miss your email if it lands directly in their inbox
• More eyes on your emails mean better results - it’s as simple as that.

Settings for specific email clients

Settings for Gmail

Depending on a user’s settings in their Gmail account, the person’s inbox could be split like the image below.

As you can see in this example our newsletter has landed in the subscriber’s Promotions tab.

The first thing we want them to do is select our email as shown in the image.

Once the email is selected, you’ll want the person to simply drag the email to the tab named Primary.

Once the email is moved to the Primary Tab of the subscriber’s inbox, a pop up message will appear to ask a subscriber whether they want to have all conversations for future emails to go into the Primary tab in their inbox.

Please note, your list name will appear as part of the message.

Your subscriber has now whitelisted emails that you send from your domain.

Settings for Outlook

In Outlook, the first thing you want your subscriber to do is simply select the email you sent.

Next, they will navigate to the three dots located at the top right side of the email preview pane.


Now all the subscriber needs to do is select Junk and then select, Never Block Sender’s Domain.

Your subscriber has now whitelisted emails that you send from your domain.

Settings for Apple Mail

Select the From Name and select Add to Contacts as illustrated in the image below.

If the email has not landed in your inbox, you will also want to ask your subscriber to move your email to the inbox by right-clicking on the email and selecting Move to Inbox.

How to tell your subscriber’s to whitelist your emails when they’ve landed in the Spam folder

Gmail:

Right-click on the message and select Not Spam. Gmail will remember this and know that your subscribers are interested in the emails coming from you.

Outlook:

Right click on the message and choose Security Options, then select Mark as not junk.

You will be asked to confirm this selection through a pop-up with the heading Mark as Not Junk. Ask your subscriber to check the Never send messages from X account to the junk folder.

Yahoo! Mail

Right-click on the message and press Not Spam.

Examples of whitelisting request from other brands

There’s many ways you can ask your subscribers to whitelist your email campaigns. It can be a super simple one line addition to your email OR a more detailed set of instructions.

Below are some examples of how other brands encourage people to whitelist their emails.

Ann Hadley’s whitelisting instructions

Carline Cole’s whitelisting instructions

Morning Brew’s whitelisting instructions

Simple addition in Mail Blaze platform to whitelist:

Did you know that you can use our built in address tag in your campaigns to easily allow you to get your subscribers to whitelist your campaigns? By adding the Address tag to your campaigns a subscriber will be able to download your contact details and add you to their address book. In this way they will be part of your address book and therefore have whitelisted your campaigns.

You can find the address tag in our platform as seen below.

To get here:

• All you need to do is go to the structure and content block you want to add the tag to
• Navigate to the text pane and select Insert
• Once you’ve selected insert you just have to scroll to the Add us to your Address book

Have any questions about getting your subscribers to whitelist your email campaigns? Ask us in the comments section below.