Why Your Music Emails Land in Promotions (And How to Reach the Primary Inbox)

If you sent an email to your list right now, how many people do you think would see it?

A lot of musicians would say "all of my subscribers." And that's kind of the problem.

The answer is probably a lot fewer than you think, and it has nothing to do with the size of your list.

When someone on your list receives your email, Gmail sorts it before they ever see it. It goes into Primary, into Promotions, or into Spam.

Primary is where people usually open things. Promotions is like a 50-50. And Spam is where emails go when nobody will ever see them.

A lot of musician emails end up in Promotions without the musician knowing, because your open rate doesn't tell you which tab your email went to. It just shows you that a lot of people didn't open it.

Why your email list is worth protecting

I feel like email is the most underrated tool a musician has right now.

Your list is the one thing in your career that nobody can take away from you. Instagram can change the algorithm. TikTok can disappear. But your email list is yours.

I've sent more than 70 newsletters so far, and the ones that reach the Primary inbox get opened at rates that social media posts don't come close to.

A list where half your emails end up in Promotions is worth half as much as it should be.

What pushes your email into Promotions

Gmail has a classifier that reads your email before your subscriber does. It looks for patterns that say "this is marketing" and routes the email based on what it finds.

The important thing to understand is that signals stack. One link is fine. One image is fine. One "available now" is fine. When you combine all three in the same email, the combination is what triggers the classifier.

Here's what musicians run into most:

• Image-heavy show announcements. A show flyer, an album cover and a ticket button stacked together in one email reads as a marketing send to Gmail. It's one of the fastest ways to end up in Promotions.
• Too many links. A Spotify link, an Apple Music link, a ticket link and a merch link in the same email add up to four links, and Gmail reads that combination as promotional.
• Sales phrases. "Available now", "get your tickets", "limited merch" and "last chance" each carry weight on their own, and putting several of them in one email stacks the signal quickly.
• A brand name as the sender. "Finch" as the sender name reads differently to Gmail than "More Than Streams" or "FinchMusic Newsletter".
• Designed templates. A logo, multiple images and styled buttons make the email look like a marketing send. A plain, text-based email that reads like a personal message is the strongest deliverability move you can make.

What about Spam?

Spam is worse than Promotions. In Promotions, people sometimes scroll past and notice your email. In Spam, they don't see it at all.

A common Spam trigger for musicians is the all-caps announcement subject line. "NEW MUSIC OUT NOW!!!" with caps and multiple exclamation marks looks like a scam to Gmail's filter.

The other big reason is a list that hasn't been cleaned in a long time. If a lot of your subscribers haven't opened anything in several months, Gmail uses that to lower your sender reputation over time.

So clean your list regularly, and remove people who haven't engaged in six months. A smaller list that opens your emails will always beat a big list that doesn't.

The simple version

Write your next email like you're sending it to one specific person on your list.

Use one link where you can. Keep the show flyer out of the email and link to the event page instead. Write short paragraphs. Send it from your own name.

If your open rates are low, you might think something is wrong with your writing. Most of the time the writing is fine, and the email just went to the wrong folder.

Once you know what Gmail is looking for, it gets a lot easier to avoid. You stop writing emails that look like announcements and start writing ones that look like private messages.

Your list is worth protecting, and protecting it starts with making sure your emails show up where people can see them. If you're still building one, I wrote more about it in my email list playbook for musicians.

A content idea to try: the thank-you carousel

Did you know that when you add music to a carousel on Instagram, it can show up in the Reels feed too? That gives you extra reach for something as simple to make as a regular carousel post.

One carousel idea that works well is a thank-you post. You show how far you've come in your music journey and thank the people who have been listening along the way. It's easy to make, and it helps people feel connected to you.

You'll find this one and hundreds more, with examples, in The Content Vault.