Troubleshoot Your Emails Going to Spam
Using Shape to send emails and experiencing deliverability issues? If your messages are frequently going to the spam folder, the primary culprit is likely due to the processes your recipient’s email client uses to sort and filter messages.
Ask That Your Domain Be Safeslisted/Whitelisted
The easiest and quickest way to get your emails out of the spam folder is to ask your recipient to safelist or whitelist the domain you send email from (ex. youremail@yourdomain.com). Being added to the recipient’s safelist means you will bypass the spam folder and end up in the inbox, where you intended. Depending on the mail client your recipient is using, this can easily be updated from their email account settings menu.
Ensure Your Messages Aren’t “Spammy”
Many email clients now have sophisticated security filters meant to screen out messages they may interpret as spam. Because message content is so important to security these days, any email that contains misspellings, broken links, and other issues the filter detects as questionable may trigger a spam alert from your recipient’s email client.
Ensure DMARC Compliance
- Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) is an important element that email service providers consider when sorting messages. The goal of DMARC is to ensure that email messages are authentic and not spoofed.
- To verify that your messages are meeting DMARC compliance, you’ll need to check that the domains listed in your From, Sender, and Mail-From headers match each other exactly.
- If you’re using a different domain to send your emails than your email header domain, this may likely trigger your messages to be filtered out. For example, if your email domain in the From header is bob@newmoneymortgages.com, but your sender domain is bobthebroker@gmail.com, you will likely experience DMARC issues.
- There are several free, online tools to check your domain’s DMARC compliance.
DMARC/SPF Settings
- Your email DMARC settings can be too restrictive. This will cause emails that are not originating directly from your email to go into quarantine.
- A simple fix would be to set your DMARC setting to “none” or “audit mode” and partner with someone else to isolate issues (over the course of at least a week) to find a setting that works best for you. Every client’s email server settings will differ, there’s no one size fits all.
- Adding the following to your SPF1 in your DNS TXT records may solve the issues that you are experiencing, but also might not. v=spf1 include:mailgun.org include:mg.setshape.com ~all
- Lastly, if the issues persist, we have the ability to authenticate a subdomain through our sending servers and route all automated messages through your authenticated subdomain as well, which requires some development on our end to adjust your system email routing. This service is a one time $500 setup fee and it is required that an IT member on your team can make the adjustments within your DNS settings that we provide to ensure this functions properly.