Sending emails through TeamSideline is one of the best ways to communicate with your members. While TeamSideline delivers your messages, email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and others ultimately decide whether a message is delivered to the inbox, promotions folder, or spam folder.

Following these best practices can significantly improve the likelihood that your emails reach your recipients.

Use a Clear Subject Line

Your subject line should accurately describe the content of your email.

Good Examples

• Practice Schedule Update
• Opening Day Information
• Registration Reminder – Deadline Friday

Avoid

• ALL CAPS subject lines (e.g., IMPORTANT READ NOW!!!)
• Excessive punctuation (!!!, ???)
• Misleading or clickbait language

Include Text in Your Email

Always include meaningful text in the body of your email. While flyers and graphics are great additions, they should not be the entire email.

Email providers use the text content to understand what your message is about. Emails that contain only an image or very little text are much more likely to be filtered as spam.

Include:

• Include a written summary.
• Explain what the attached or embedded image contains.
• Clearly identify your organization.

Avoid

• Blank emails
• Emails containing only an image or flyer
• One-line messages with no context

Identify Your Organization

Recipients and email providers should immediately recognize who the email is from.

Include:

• Organization name
• League name
• Contact information (when appropriate)

This builds trust with both recipients and email providers.

Keep Formatting Simple

Simple emails generally have better deliverability than heavily formatted marketing-style emails.

Recommended:

• Short paragraphs
• Bullet lists
• Headings
• A few images

Avoid:

• Large amounts of colored text
• Excessive fonts
• Oversized images
• Flashy formatting

Avoid Spam-Like Language

Certain writing styles can increase the chance of spam filtering.

Avoid:

• ALL CAPS
• Multiple exclamation points
• "CLICK HERE NOW!!!"
• "URGENT!!!!!"
• "FREE!!!"

Instead, write naturally and professionally.

Send Relevant Emails

Only send communications that are important to your members.

Frequent emails that recipients ignore or delete without opening can negatively affect future email delivery.

Encourage Members to Check Spam

If someone is missing emails:

• Check their Spam or Junk folder.
• Mark the email as Not Spam if found.
• Add your TeamSideline email address to their contacts or safe sender list.

These actions help train email providers to trust future messages.

What Happens If an Email Is Flagged?

Email providers monitor sender reputation. If an email appears suspicious, they may:

• Deliver it to Spam.
• Temporarily filter future emails from the same sender.
• Delay delivery.

There is no way for TeamSideline to manually reset or override an email provider's spam filtering decisions.

The best way to improve deliverability is to consistently send high-quality, legitimate communications that follow the best practices outlined above.

Quick Checklist Before Sending

Before sending your next email, ask yourself:

• ✓ Does my subject line clearly describe the email?
• ✓ Am I using normal capitalization?
• ✓ Does the email contain meaningful text?
• ✓ Am I including more than just an image?
• ✓ Is my organization clearly identified?
• ✓ Is the formatting clean and easy to read?
• ✓ Is this information relevant to my recipients?

Following these guidelines will help maximize the chances that your emails reach your members' inboxes.