Do filters penalize promotional design or HTML?

Filters do not automatically penalize promotional design or HTML emails. Well-designed marketing emails reach inboxes constantly. What triggers filtering is specific technical issues, not the promotional nature itself.

Problematic patterns include: excessive images with minimal text, broken or malformed HTML, hidden elements, suspicious link structures, and rendering tricks.

Acceptable practices include: clean, well-structured HTML, balanced text-to-image ratio, proper alt text, working links, and consistent rendering across clients.

Gmail's Promotions tab is not a penalty. It categorizes marketing mail appropriately while delivering it to the inbox. This is success, not filtering.

Focus on technical quality rather than avoiding promotional appearance. Good marketing email is supposed to look like marketing email.

Promotional design is expected and accepted. Filters distinguish legitimate marketing from spam through signals beyond aesthetics.