My Gallery Email Went to Spam. What Now?

Gallery platforms split into two camps. Some send the delivery email to your client from the platform's own servers. Others leave the sending to you. The fix depends on which camp you are in.

On clientgallery.io you are always in the second row. If a delivery email went to spam, it was an email you sent, and everything below is within your reach.

This is a deliberate choice, and it is written into the product. The studio panel that prepares client messages says so in plain words: we never email your clients. The automatic reminder system that exists for photographers has no client branch. An old reminder link from earlier emails now sends nothing. It only opens the ready-to-send message in your studio.

What the product does send, and to whom:

When a client sends picks, the gallery asks for their email address. That address is passed to you inside the picks notice. It is never used to send the client anything.

To make sending easy, each gallery in your studio has a panel called Message for your client. It holds three pre-written messages: Gallery ready, Reminder to pick, and Download expiring. Each one carries the gallery link, and the password on its own line when the gallery has one. You can copy the message, open it in your own email app, send it as a text, or use your device's share sheet. When the gallery has the client's address on file, the email button fills it in.

Nobody outside a mail provider can promise an inbox. What you can do is stack the known signals in your favour. A message you send yourself carries more of them.

• The client already knows your address. They wrote to you to book. They signed a contract you sent. A reply in that same thread comes from a sender they have already dealt with.
• Contacts count. Gmail states that when a sender is added to Google Contacts, Gmail stops sending their messages to Spam. A client who has saved your address is protected in exactly that way.
• One rescue sticks. Gmail also states that once a client removes your email from Spam, future emails from you will not go to Spam. That lesson attaches to your address, so the next delivery benefits.
• It reads like a person. A short note with the client's name, one link and your signature is the kind of message people expect from a photographer. It is not a template sent to thousands.
• You can see it left. The message sits in your own Sent folder, so you know the date, the address and the link you actually sent.

The trade-off is honest. You press send yourself, every time. There is no automatic reminder to your client on day seven. For some studios that is a reason to stay on a platform that emails clients for them. For most, one message a gallery is a small price for a sender the client recognises.

The large mail providers publish rules for senders. Most of them target bulk senders, which a studio sending one gallery at a time is not. The baseline still matters if you send from your own domain.

What this means for a studio, in practice:

• On a free webmail address, the provider runs the sending domain. There is nothing to set up.
• On your own domain, ask your mail host whether SPF and DKIM are set up for it. Gmail and Yahoo both require at least one of the two from every sender. A domain that has neither is starting from behind.
• If you also send a newsletter, keep it apart from delivery mail where you can. Both providers measure spam rates, and a delivery email should not share a record with a marketing list.

Once the client finds your message, one action on their side protects the next one. Gmail documents these steps on a computer.

1. Open Gmail and go to the Spam folder, under More in the left menu.
2. Tick the box next to your email.
3. Click Not spam at the top.

Gmail states that after this, future emails from that sender will not go to Spam. Adding your address to their contacts does the same job. Ask for one of the two in a single friendly sentence. Do not send a list of settings.

For clients on Yahoo, Outlook.com or a work address, the equivalent is usually called Not spam or Not junk. The exact steps vary, so ask them to look for that button on the message rather than following a guide written for another provider.

No sending habit guarantees an inbox. These three habits make a spam folder a delay of minutes, not a week.

1. Tell the client the link is coming. At the end of the shoot, or in your last message before delivery, say the gallery will arrive by email in the coming days, from which address, and to check spam if it does not show up.

2. Send it twice, on two channels. The same panel that opens your email app also sends the message as a text. A text carries the same link and the same password. It is the quickest way around a mail filter.

3. Check the opened indicator instead of guessing. Every gallery tile in your studio carries a small dot. Green means your client has opened the gallery. Red means nobody has yet. Your own visits are never counted, so green means someone else looked. The studio can filter galleries to All, Seen by client or Not opened yet.

The dot answers the only question that matters here: did the link reach them. It does not tell you which folder the email sat in, and nothing can. The account-wide analytics page adds visits, photo views and picks across all your galleries, but the opened dot is the per-gallery signal.

A delivery email does not need to be clever. It needs to look like what it is: a short note from a photographer to a client.

• Use the client's name and the shoot's name in the first line.
• Put one link in the message. The gallery link is the only one they need.
• Paste the full gallery link, not a link through a third-party shortener.
• Keep the password on its own line, written exactly as set.
• Skip attachments. The photos are in the gallery, not in the email.
• Skip capital-letter subject lines and urgent wording. Your photos are ready is enough.
• Sign with your name and studio, as you do on every other email to them.

The pre-written messages in your studio already follow this shape. For longer versions, including a final delivery and a re-send months later, see the delivery email templates.

• Email sender guidelines, Gmail Help, https://support.google.com/a/answer/81126, fetched 30 September 2026
• Report spam in Gmail, Gmail Help, https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1366858, fetched 30 September 2026
• Sender Best Practices, Yahoo Sender Hub, https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/, fetched 30 September 2026
• Outlook.com Postmaster, https://substrate.office.com/ip-domain-management-snds/postmaster, fetched 30 September 2026

Product behaviour was checked in the clientgallery.io code on 30 September 2026: no email is ever sent to a photographer's client; the automatic reminder sweep and the old reminder link send nothing to clients; the Message for your client panel with its three pre-written messages, the password line, and the copy, email app, text and share options; the client's email address passed to the photographer inside the picks notice only; the picks and comment notices sent to the photographer; and the opened dot on each gallery tile, which never counts the studio's own visits.