Why your venue's event emails land in spam, and why open rates mislead you

Event outreach from restaurants, hotels, and venues usually lands in spam because of how it’s sent. The common causes are too many emails from one inbox, new addresses that haven’t warmed up, and links and images in the email. Venues often don’t know this is happening to them, because from the inside it just looks like nobody is responding.

Open rates make the problem harder to see. A spam filter can trigger an open before any person sees your email, so a campaign can show opens without reaching the people you wrote to. Outreach only books events when it reaches the inbox. If your emails land in spam, you never get the chance to win that event revenue. For a small team that’s already stretched, it also means hours of work on a campaign that never had a fair chance.

The sending rules in this article are the ones we follow at Dexter. Dexter is an event sales software for restaurants, hotels, and venues to grow event revenue.

How to keep your venue’s event emails out of spam, and what to measure

• Venues should send outreach from several warmed-up addresses, each sending a low number of emails a day. Every new address needs 2 to 3 weeks before it carries a campaign.
• Keep links and images out of your outreach emails, because they do more to push an email into spam than anything else in it.
• Judge every campaign on replies first, then bookings, and then revenue, because a spam filter or a privacy feature can trigger an open.
• Remove bounced emails and anyone who asks you to stop, and never remove a lead just because they didn’t open.

Why event emails land in spam

Email providers keep a reputation for every sender, and their filters use it to decide what reaches the inbox. As Yahoo puts it in their guidance for senders, “Each IP and DKIM domain has a reputation, which can impact the delivery of your email.” When that reputation drops, more of what you send lands in spam, and that’s when your inbox will start getting burned.

Five things usually hurt a venue’s reputation with filters:

• You’re sending too many emails from one inbox. An inbox that suddenly sends hundreds of emails in a day looks like a spammer to a filter.
• Your address is new and hasn’t warmed up. A brand new address has no sending history, so filters don’t trust it yet.
• Your email carries links and images. In our experience at Dexter, these are the number one cause of landing in spam, ahead of anything else in the email.
• Your domain doesn’t have SPF or DKIM set up. These are the records that show an email really came from your domain. Since February 1, 2024, Google has required anyone sending to Gmail accounts to set up SPF or DKIM, and Yahoo asks bulk senders to set up both.
• Too many people are marking your email as spam. Google and Yahoo both ask senders to keep spam complaints below 0.3% of their email, and Google recommends staying below 0.10%. In plain terms, 0.3% is 3 complaints for every 1,000 emails you send, and 0.10% is 1 complaint for every 1,000.

Who you’re writing to matters as well, because filters aren’t equally strict. Gmail’s filter is the most forgiving, Microsoft Outlook’s is much stricter, and a company’s own custom email domain is often the strictest of all. That makes corporate leads the hardest to reach. The person planning a company holiday party is usually on a work address, so your email to them has to get through the toughest filter on your list.

How to send event outreach without burning your inboxes

A venue’s safest setup is several warmed-up addresses, each sending a low number of emails a day. That way, no single inbox has to carry the whole campaign or start to look like a spammer to a filter. Here is how to set that up before your next campaign.

Warm up every new address. Give each one 2 to 3 weeks before it sends a campaign, so that it has a sending history by the time your first emails go out. For holiday outreach, that makes the weeks before July your prep time, and you can see how those weeks fit into the season in our holiday outreach calendar.

Build your volume slowly. Even a warmed-up address shouldn’t jump from a handful of emails a day to hundreds overnight. Google tells senders to “Increase sending volume slowly to avoid delivery problems”, and they warn that suddenly doubling what you send can lead to rate limiting or reputation drops.

Send fewer emails a day to corporate contacts. Company filters are the strictest ones you’ll meet, so have each address send fewer emails a day to your corporate list than to the rest of your contacts. Our guide to re-engaging past event leads covers how to build those lists and how a full campaign runs.

Keep links and images out of the email. This helps with the person on the other end as well as the filter, since a planner may not trust an email that looks automated.

Clean your list while the campaign runs. Check where your emails are landing as you go. Google’s Postmaster Tools shows your spam rate on email sent to Gmail users, so that’s a good place to start. Remove bounced emails as soon as they come back. Yahoo tells senders to “Remove invalid recipients from your list promptly.” Update those contacts in your event management system, like Tripleseat, so your records are ready for the next campaign. Anyone who asks you to stop comes off the list at the same time.

Why open rates mislead

An email open can come from software as well as from a person. That makes opens the worst signal you can judge a campaign on. Teams rely on them anyway. An event campaign is a rare send for a venue whose email is mostly catering orders and reservations. When your team sees 10 opens on one email, it’s natural to plan your follow-up around those 10 people, even though you can’t know that any of them read it.

A spam filter is the first thing that can trigger an open. When it scans your email, it can register an open before any person sees it, so the count can go up on an email that never reached the inbox.

Privacy features are the second. An email tool counts an open when the email loads its remote content, like images. Apple explains that this remote content is how senders learn “when and how many times you opened their email”. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection changes that, because “Protect Mail Activity downloads remote content in the background by default”. Your email tool can then count an open that no person made.

A low open count doesn’t tell you much either. Google says they don’t track open rates at all, and that “Low open rates aren’t necessarily an accurate indicator of deliverability or spam classification issues”. Taken together, the open count can’t tell you who read your email or whether it reached the inbox.

What to measure instead of opens

A reply is the one signal that a real person read your email, so judge every campaign on replies first. Then look at bookings, and then at revenue, because revenue is what the campaign is for. When you’re making the case to the owner, one simple line on what a campaign brought in will do more for you than any open count. Keep an eye on your spam rate alongside those three numbers, so you know your emails are reaching the inbox.

Opens shouldn’t decide who stays on your list either. Our approach at Dexter is to remove bounced emails and anyone who asks to stop, and to keep everyone else. We never remove a lead just because they didn’t open, because a past client who stayed quiet this season may be the one who books next season. When they’re ready to book something, they’ll tell you.

Questions to ask before your next send

A venue should run through this list before their next campaign goes out and fix anything that doesn’t get a yes.

• Has every new address had its 2 to 3 weeks to warm up?
• Is each address sending a low number of emails a day, and has it avoided any sudden jump?
• Is SPF or DKIM set up on your domain?
• Are you sending fewer emails a day to your corporate contacts?
• Have you taken the links and images out of your email?
• Have you removed bounced emails and anyone who asked you to stop?
• Do you have a way to check where your emails are landing and to watch your spam rate?
• Will you judge this campaign on replies, then bookings, and then revenue?

How Dexter runs outreach to stay out of spam

At Dexter, we run outreach by the same rules you’ve just read. Dexter has three parts, AI Search, Intake, and Outreach, with Insights included. Outreach is the part that re-engages your past clients and past inquiries, with personal sends, follow-ups, and a clean list. It works only with people who have already reached out to you or booked with you, so it brings you no cold leads.

Dexter sets up and warms up your sending addresses and keeps an eye on deliverability, including whether your emails are landing in spam. Your emails go out from a named member of your events team, so every reply goes straight to that person. Outreach tracks your reply rate, spam rate, confirmed revenue, and pipeline, so you can see whether your emails are reaching the inbox and what your campaigns brought in. If you’d rather keep running outreach yourself, the questions above are the best place to start before your next send.

FAQ

Related reading

• When should a venue start holiday party outreach?
• How to re-engage past event leads
• How an event manager makes the case for event sales software to the owner

Sources

• Email sender guidelines, Google, read October 23, 2026.
• Sender best practices, Yahoo Sender Hub, read October 23, 2026.
• Mail Privacy Protection and Privacy, Apple, read October 23, 2026.