Email has become so essential that it’s mundane; a banal utility. We take for granted that when we hit “send,” our emails will—for the most part—get to wherever they’re going. But what about when they don’t? If you’re a new company struggling with your emails being flagged as spam, you’ve come to the right place. This guide helps you understand how your new domain may be impacting your messages and how to safely send emails.
Why are my emails getting marked as spam?
Have you ever hesitated before buying a product with zero reviews? Email providers treat new domains with the same kind of skepticism.
Providers use a domain’s reputation to predict the legitimacy of messages and decide whether to allow any given message into a recipient’s inbox. Reputations are built over time as you send messages that people open and respond to, along with proper authentication protocols (more on that below). Your reputation can also be damaged by low-quality links, keyword stuffing, or users reporting your messages as junk.
Without an established reputation to back you up, the safest play for an email provider is to err on the side of caution and direct your messages to spam.
What limits do email providers impose?
In addition to domain reputations, IP address reputations are also tracked. IP addresses can include routing information that points back to your email provider, meaning your behavior may impact other reputations, too.
Microsoft and Google serve a massive proportion of global users, so they’re particularly protective of their reputations. Both implement limits on daily outbound emails as a guardrail, though your limits will vary based on your provider and license type. As an example, Gmail caps senders at 500 external recipients per message or 2,000 messages per day (review Gmail limits from Google). Outlook’s recipient cap is also 500 per message, with a daily “non-relationship recipient” limit of 1,000, referring to someone you’ve never emailed (review Outlook limits from Microsoft).
If you’re running automated email sequences directly through your inbox, be aware that those emails still count toward your limits. Depending on your list size and the cadence of messages in a sequence, you could quickly hit your limit and get locked out without realizing why.
And in case you’re thinking about gaming the system: we don’t suggest trying to outsmart your provider’s limits by sending 1,999 emails per day. Providers are sensitive to behavior like this, and your activity may end up flagged anyway.
What happens if my activity is flagged?
If you’re flagged for abuse, your provider may prevent you from sending outbound mail for 24 hours. These penalties will progressively escalate with repeated offenses until your organization is deregistered or blocklisted entirely. Because these activities can constitute a violation of their terms of service, they are under no obligation to offer an appeals process for you to contest these decisions.
How can I safely send emails?
Thankfully, there are ways to improve the odds that your messages reach your recipients.
Use email warming services. Also called email warm-up services or IP warming, companies like Mailivery and Warmly will gradually build up your domain’s reputation by sending short messages to and from reputable domains, increasing in volume over time. This activity teaches email providers to treat your communications as legitimate.
Send bulk emails via third-party services. Trying to send mass emails directly from your inbox could result in your provider blocking you from sending any outbound mail. Third-party email services like HubSpot, MailChimp, Mailgun, Constant Contact, and many others, are designed specifically to send high-volume messages and have many best practices built in.
Utilize subdomains for sending messages. When sending high-volume messages, connect a subdomain to your third-party mail service instead of your primary domain. (A subdomain would be an address ending in “@marketing.yourcompany.com” or “@news.yourcompany.com”.) This protects the viability of your primary domain and gives you the flexibility to pivot to a different subdomain in case one becomes blocked by email providers. You should also consider having more than one subdomain “warmed” at all times, in case you need to make this switch quickly.
Double-check AI-generated content. AI features are popping up everywhere, including third-party mailing services and sales automation platforms. No matter how or where you generate it, make sure to proofread AI content for typos, grammatical errors, and overly salesly language. Not only do mistakes like these reflect poorly on your brand, but they also scream “spam” to an inbound email server.
What about SPF, DKIM & DMARC?
It’s hard to discuss email and spam without mentioning SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. While this may look like a spoonful of alphabet soup, these letters refer to three methods of email authentication.
- SPF (sender policy framework) lets you publicly confirm who is allowed to send messages on behalf of your domain. For example, if you send an email as “messages@marketing.yourcompany.com” through a third-party service, a recipient’s server may double-check your SPF to check that the third party is approved to be sending messages from your domain, as opposed to maliciously imitating you.
- DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) essentially signs each message with a code that other services can use to verify the authenticity of a message.
- DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) tells other organizations what to do when they receive emails sent on behalf of your domain that they have determined is spam. DMARC also functions as a reporting service for messages purporting to come from your domain, helping you identify potential impersonators or gaps.
Proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup can help improve your domain’s reputation, as servers will check these records as your email moves from sender to recipient. However, implementing these protocols can be difficult without technical knowledge, and mistakes could cause time-consuming—and potentially expensive—errors in your mail flow.
To learn more about SPF, SKIM, and DMARC on your own, we suggest starting with Learn & Test DMARC. You can also test your emails for spammyness with Mail Tester.
Already a Packit client? Contact Packit support for more information about how our experts can assist.
