Having your emails fall into spam folders continually can be a business critical issue. Here are a few tips we have found useful for improving our email deliverability.
Before We Begin: Deliverability vs Delivery
Email Deliverability is about whether an email was delivered right into the recipient’s inbox or straight to their spam folder. The hacks below are about email deliverability.
Email Delivery is about whether your recipient’s server accepted your email or not. If a message bounces for any reason (incorrect email address, the domain doesn’t exist, attachments are too heavy, etc.), this counts as a failed delivery. You will usually receive a bounceback email notifying you if this happens. The following hacks do not deal with this.
A. Check Your Domain to See if There is an Issue
MX Toolbox
Authentications play a significant role in email deliverability. MX Toolbox offers various tools aimed at helping improve the domains’ capabilities.
- Send a test email to ping@tools.mxtoolbox.com from the email you are concerned about. You’ll receive an email with a link to your report in a few minutes.
- Go to: https://mxtoolbox.com/ and enter your domain to see if there are any concerns
Google PostMaster Tools
Go to https://postmaster.google.com/u/0/managedomains and see what Google tells you.
If You Want More Tools to see if there is an issue:
- https://mailtrap.io/blog/test-email-deliverability/
- Google, “Email deliverability tools”
B. Some Issues We’ve Found and Links to Fix Them
Useful URL
WHAT IS IT
DMARC not set-up
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance is an email protocol; that when published for a domain; controls what happens if a message fails authentication tests.
Set up your DMARC record at your domain DNS records. Ask your email provider for directions.
DKIM or SPF not set-up
DKIM is a stronger authentication method than SPF.
Setting this up depends on what email service you are using.
* NameCheap’s PrivateEmail* Microsoft 365 Email
* Google Workspace Gmail
DomainKey Identified Mail (DKIM) tells IPs you’re the original sender and nobody fraudulently intercepted your email.
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a special list, a whitelist, that includes everyone who is authorized to send messages on your behalf.
Follow your email service’s instructions to add these records to your Domain DNS records
Domain blacklisted
Your domain has been reported as spam enough times to be blacklisted.
Consider using a different domain for mass emails.
Server blacklisted
If you are on a shared server, another domain sharing that server could have caused all emails from your server to be penalized.
Consider moving your email to a different server.
Poor email practices
Many things such as link shorteners to suspicious attachments can get your email pushed to the spam folder
Adapt some of the recommended email habits.
There are many additional email security steps provided by various vendors. For example, if you use Microsoft Office or 365, you can consider:
- Upgrading to a Microsoft Business Premium license and selecting a few security settings
- Paying for a Microsoft Defender plan as seen in this infographic
- Implementing best practices (e.g., multifactor authentication) which are a pain but effective
There are also many other resources available from companies that handle emails for a living. We just wanted to share a few tips we’ve found helpful in response to an inquiry from a colleague. Hope this has been helpful!
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