So there can be a number of reasons why your email goes into the recipients spam folder and these reasons can also depend upon how the email server is set up for the recipient i.e. gmail.com deals with mail differently to that of btinternet.com.
One of the first things to check is if you get a mail error message from the recipients server. This can give you some idea but you will often need to look at your messages and your domain set up.
We create an SPF record automatically for all domains that are created on our servers and we monitor VERY closely for spam to prevent any blacklisting of our IPs. None of our IPs are on any Realtime Black Lists or any other sort of spam lists so if your mail is being sent to the spam folder it can be one of only a few things
Check your DNS records for your domain
Primarily your first port of call is to check that you have the following records set up on your domains DNS:
- SPF record
- DKIM record. To enable DomainKeys go into your cPanel and go to Email Management->Email Authentication. You will see a setting for DomainKeys - make sure that it is enabled
- preferably also a DMARC record
The DKIM is a unique key for your domain, the SPF record informs recipient servers what IP/hostnames are allowed to send email out using your domain and the DMARC record tells email servers what to do with your email if it fails these checks.
Your SPF and DKIM records are generally set up, at least if you are using our hosting but you will need to check with your DNS management portal for your domain. Where this is will depend on what nameservers you are using for your domain.
Check the content of your messages
A good place to start with troubleshooting your emails for deliverability issues is to use a mailtester (e.g. https://www.mail-tester.com/ ). This requires you to send an email to a randomly generated email address. You can then check your score to see if there are any issues. It checks aspects of email authentication, blacklists as well as content.
Content that can cause issues are attachments ad often signatures, with images or broken links.
We all get caught out by our email going into spam occasionally. It really is dependent on 3 things:
- How your domain DNS is set up
- The content of your email
- The spam rules of the recipients email server
By following the above you can reduce the likelihood of that happening dramatically.
