Why Test Emails are Often Found in the Exchange Spam Folder

Modified on Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 1:33 PM

Why Test Emails are Often Found in the Exchange Spam Folder

4 Key Factors That Impact Email Deliverability

IP Addresses

The Internet Protocol address is a numerical identifier of the sender’s server. All devices connected to a computer network have an IP address. (Thus every email is sent from an IP address.)

An IP address reflects the reputation of the sender, which is based on several factors.

Send volume. The number of emails sent.

Send frequency. The number of campaigns that are deployed per week or month.

User interaction. Individuals who open and click — and complain or unsubscribe.

Quality. Percentages of bounces or undeliverable emails.

IP reputation impacts how an Internet service provider will treat an email. The User can easily check the IP reputation on free services such as Sender Score from Return Path, the email deliverability service.

Most companies utilize an email service provider to send marketing emails. ESPs use one of two types of IP addresses:

Shared IP. More than one company or brand is sending emails from the same IP address.

Dedicated IP. The company or brand has its own unique IP address. It is not shared with other companies.

There are reasons for having either a shared or dedicated IP. Smaller companies that send a relatively limited amount of email can benefit from the pooling volume (with other senders) of a shared IP. ISPs gauge the volume of email an IP is sending as a factor in determining reputation. Too little volume (typically less than 20,000 emails per week) will not register. For low-volume senders, a shared IP is almost a necessity. Also, it allows smaller senders to benefit from the positive engagement of bigger companies with established email programs.

Dedicated IPs are for large brands who send a lot of email. Dedicated IPs allow those brands to control their own IP reputation without worrying about other senders. A dedicated IP should be “warmed up” — slowly increasing frequency and reputation — so that ISPs will accept email from that address. This is a systematic process and takes a bit of finesse and time before sending to the entire file at frequent intervals.

Domains

Similar to the IP address, the sending domain carries a reputation that affects deliverability. Some brands choose a variation of their domain for the originating address. It is a good idea to have different domains (e.g., mail.store.com vs. orders.store.com) for marketing emails versus transactional, such as an order confirmation or shipment notification. If promotional emails receive many complaints or the sending domain becomes compromised, transactional emails would not be affected if they are from a different domain.

Periodically run both the sending domains and the IP address through a blacklist checker, such as MX Toolbox, to make sure that they are not flagged for spam or other complaints that would lead to blacklisting.

Run your sending domains and IP address through a blacklist checker, such as MX Toolbox.

Run the sending domains and IP address through a blacklist checker, such as MX Toolbox.

Behavior of Recipients

ISPs use deliverability algorithms that evaluate the actions of recipients. If an individual repeatedly deletes the email without opening, that may cause an ISP to filter emails into a subfolder. Excessive complaints and unsubscribes could cause that ISP from accepting any mail from the Company.

Thus, use strategies that encourage opens and clicks.

Use engaging and relevant subject lines.

Adjust frequency as requested by each subscriber.

Delete unengaged subscribers.

Ensure subject and from lines are not misleading.

Subject Lines and Content

Email subject lines and body content can trip spam filters and thus impact deliverability.

Content should be a mix of images and text — a good rule is 40 percent images and 60 percent text.

Always include the sender’s physical mailing address, and a clear unsubscribe link.

Do not use excessive capitalization or punctuation.

Use clean HTML code, properly formatted.

When in doubt, use a spam check. Most ESPs have a spam check, to check the message for red flags.)

NYE
Getting an email to an inbox is not always easy. Many factors determine whether an email is delivered, blocked, or even filtered into a subfolder, such as junk or spam. In this post, I’ll explore four key factors that determine email deliverability.

IP Addresses

The Internet Protocol address is a numerical identifier of the sender’s server. All devices connected to a computer network have an IP address. (Thus every email is sent from an IP address.) An IP address reflects the reputation of the sender, which is based on several factors.

Send volume. The number of emails sent.
Send frequency. The number of campaigns that are deployed per week or month.
User interaction. Individuals who open and click — and complain or unsubscribe.
Quality. Percentages of bounces or undeliverable emails.
IP reputation impacts how an Internet service provider will treat an email. The User can easily check the IP reputation on free services such as Sender Score from Return Path, the email deliverability service.

Most companies utilize an email service provider to send marketing emails. ESPs use one of two types of IP addresses:

Shared IP. More than one company or brand is sending emails from the same IP address.
Dedicated IP. The company or brand has its own unique IP address. It is not shared with other companies.
There are reasons for having either a shared or dedicated IP. Smaller companies that send a relatively limited amount of email can benefit from the pooling volume (with other senders) of a shared IP. ISPs gauge the volume of email an IP is sending as a factor in determining reputation. Too little volume (typically less than 20,000 emails per week) will not register. For low-volume senders, a shared IP is almost a necessity. Also, it allows smaller senders to benefit from the positive engagement of bigger companies with established email programs.

Domains

Similar to the IP address, the sending domain carries a reputation that affects deliverability. Some brands choose a variation of their domain for the originating address. It is a good idea to have different domains (e.g., mail.store.com vs. orders.store.com) for marketing emails versus transactional, such as an order confirmation or shipment notification. If promotional emails receive many complaints or the sending domain becomes compromised, transactional emails would not be affected if they are from a different domain.

Run the sending domains and IP address through a blacklist checker, such as MX Toolbox.

Behavior of Recipients ISPs use deliverability algorithms that evaluate the actions of recipients. If an individual repeatedly deletes the email without opening, that may cause an ISP to filter emails into a subfolder. Excessive complaints and unsubscribes could cause that ISP from accepting any mail from the Company.

Thus, use strategies that encourage opens and clicks.

Use engaging and relevant subject lines.

Adjust frequency as requested by each subscriber.

Delete unengaged subscribers.

Ensure subject and from lines are not misleading.

Subject Lines and Content

Email subject lines and body content can trip spam filters and thus impact deliverability.

Content should be a mix of images and text — a good rule is 40 percent images and 60 percent text.

Always include the sender’s physical mailing address, and a clear unsubscribe link.

Do not use excessive capitalization or punctuation.

Use clean HTML code, properly formatted.

When in doubt, use a spam check. Most ESPs have a spam check, to check the message for red flags.

Permission

When sending an email, the email must have a from email address. As the email is being sent from a server, the server must be allowed to send emails on behalf of the domain in the from email address. The owner of the domain must give explicit permission for any server to send on behalf of that domain.

Without this explicit permission, anyone could send emails on behalf of the User and no one would be the wiser. The owner of the domain can set up records that define which servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of the domain. The permission is set up either by setting up MX/SPF records on the DNS (Domain Name Server). When the email client server receives an email, it checks the DNS records to see if the server permissions are set up. If they are not, the email is rejected.

Please Note: In Enquire MAP, all emails require CNAME records to be set up to register this permission:

Navigate to Administration > Account Settings > Account Setup tab > Click VIEW WHITELABELING:

If the User has not set them yet for a new account, please connect with the enquire MAP Support team as this should have been prepared upon On-boarding.

MS Outlook Issues

If the Company uses MS Outlook, the User may find the emails that they send internally with Enquire MAP (i.e. testing) that end up in the Junk folder. In some cases, Office 365 requires a bit of extra setup to allow others to send emails with the domain to the Company.

To ensure the emails are delivered internally, the User may need to adjust the SPF record which is a Sender Policy Framework record that is used to indicate to mail exchanges which hosts are authorized to send mail for a domain. It's defined in RFC 4408, and clarified by RFC 7208 records which are used to tell the world which servers can be considered as trusted. Using MS Outlook/ Office 365, the User will have had to set up an SPF record to allow Microsoft to send the emails. Please Note: There can only be one SPF record so there is already one, the USer will need to adjust it. A great tool is Adjusting the SPF Record

Additionally, the User should add the Enquire MAP servers to the admin panel in Office365 as trusted. Some of the trusted IPs include: 168.245.127.234, 167.89.88.182, 198.21.1.38, 168.245.51.91, 168.245.64.241, 168.245.19.147, 167.89.76.51, 149.72.165.195, 167.89.85.171, 149.72.156.63, 149.72.135.93, 168.245.52.100, 149.72.130.11

The user can also add include:_spf.activedemand.com to the SPF record in order to enable the account to have the most up-to-date information. There can be multiple includes (I.E, include:_spf.activedemand.com include:_spf.freshsales.io)

Also, doing the internal trust for the IPs will make the MS Outlook server happy.

Domain Reputation if a lot of spam has been sent via the domain, the domain will get a reputation that is less than desirable. One bad actor using the domain can ruin it for everyone in the company. If the actor is bad enough, the domain will be blacklisted and make it very difficult to deliver any business emails.

IP Reputation if the server that the User are sending emails from is shared, and others are sending spam, the IP address can get a bad reputation. Note, Enquire MAP uses a reputation based IP pool system. The like actors are migrated to the appropriate pool of servers. Enquire MAP has a low tolerance for bounce/spam. Thus even the worst actors are still great marketers. That being said, those that are top performers are rewarded by being given access to the premium pools. The system is automated, thus there is no way to 'buy' the way into the top tier.

Content: Most email firewalls are very good at determining the type of email being sent. If the User sends image heavy/html heavy emails, the emails will be flagged as promotional. If the User sends emails with large $ figures and messaging that can be sexual in nature, this will be flagged as spam.

Please reach out to the dedicated Enquire Account Manager or Enquire MAP Support team for further assistance.