What is email deliverability? Email deliverability plays a critical role in lead generation, customer acquisition and retention. We’re here to explain the steps to start improving your email deliverability.

There are dozens email deliverability best practices, and most fall under the marketing team or person managing your email campaigns. These include:

In addition to these items, your domain administrator should make the following backend server changes to improve the amount of emails delivered:

Here is more information and instructions on making the backend system changes.

1. Setting up SPF records

What are SPF records? SPF records tell mailboxes which hosts are allowed to send mail from a given domain. You can add SPF records in your DNS settings to prove your authenticity and improve email deliverability.

Click here to for step-by-step instructions on setting up SPF records.

2. Setting up DKIM records

DKIM is another form of email authentication that allows an organization to claim responsibility for a message in a way that can be validated by the recipient. Setting up DKIM for your domain will verify your messages are being sent from an authorized server.

Click here for step-by-step instructions on setting up DKIM records.

These changes combined with a steady ramp-up in sending volume, earning high levels of engagement as you go, and monitoring your performance will help ensure the deliverability of your emails.

If you come across emailing problems, like a low deliverability rate, or open rates dropping below 30% it may be time to evaluate your messaging, audience (list quality) and potentially reduce volume until open rates return to 30%+.

3. Setting up DMARC

DMARC is an added safety measure that helps better control email deliverability and protects your brand reputation. This enables receivers to qualify if incoming email matches what they know about the sender and tells the receivers’ servers what to do if things don’t match up. How to set up DMARC?

Click here for step by step instructions on how to set up DMARC.

The score value ranges from 0 (bad) to 10 (excellent). The higher your score is, the less chance you have to get noticed by spam filters. However, please note that the Mail Tester score is not a guarantee of inbox or spam delivery.

You can manually check your email deliverability score using the mentioned service or ask our support team to help you.

You can find more information on DMARC and DKIM below.

If you choose to manually check your email deliverability score, go to the Mail Tester service and run their simple two-step procedure. When you get the result from Mail Tester, expand each section (+) to see the more detailed explanations.

Below we will take a closer look at the most important warnings and give recommendations on how to deal with them.

Section: SpamAssassin does not like you

SpamAssassin is an anti-spam platform that provides a filter to classify emails and block spam. This filter includes a list of rules against which your message is checked.

In PeopleLinx, emails sent from sequences contain both HTML and plain text as well as all necessary tags. In general, HTML warnings can be ignored since you are sending emails from a third-party app (PeopleLinx).

Section: You're not fully authenticated

This section contains a report on domain configuration. If you send emails from your domain, you need to make sure all necessary settings are configured correctly: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, rDNS, MX records, A record. Missing or incorrectly configured parameters lead to email deliverability issues.

The above settings are domain settings, which means that:

SPF record warning

SPF is a TXT record in your DNS that identifies the mail servers that are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain. SPF is located in DNS records on your hosting website.

Mail Tester will help you to determine if you set it properly and will point to the root of the problem if a misconfiguration is found.

Note: Your mail provider is a required part of your SPF. If your mail provider is not listed in the SPF, then the mail provider is not authenticated.

How to set SPF record (if you don't have one)

The SPF record can be edited here:

Most common settings for the SPF record:

Type: TXT
​Hostname: @
​TXT value: v=spf1 [mail provider value] ~all (other options: -all/?all)

For instance, the SPF record for GSuite users is:

The SPF record for Office 365 users is:

For other mail providers, visit their support section to check the SPF record you need to use.

Important:

For example, if you already have Mandrill SPF and need to authenticate GSuite, your future record should look like this:

Below you can find information on how to set SPF records for the most popular hosting websites:

Godaddy: Add an SPF record

WIX: Adding or Updating SPF Records in Your Wix Account

Namecheap: How do I add TXT/SPF/DKIM/DMARC records for my domain?

Bluehost: How To Setup a DNS SPF

DKIM warning

DKIM is an email authentication method to verify if an email was actually sent and authorized by the owner of the domain.

DKIM is provided by your mail service, and it is not recommended to send emails without DKIM.

For other mail providers, visit their support section or ask your provider's support team to assist you with DKIM.

DMARC warning

The DMARC policy allows senders to indicate that their emails are protected by SPF and/or DKIM, and to give instructions if none of these authentication methods pass. DMARC should be configured in DNS. Make sure you have DKIM and SPF set before configuring DMARC. We recommend following these instructions to generate a DMARC record or use the Mail Tester recommendations.

Section: Your message could be improved

In most cases, you will see the same result unless you have a List-Unsubscribe header, which would make this section perfect.

Section: You are listed in blacklists

Mail Tester also checks if your sending IP address is on the most common blacklists.

In case you find your IP address in any other blacklists, it is better to contact them directly and find out how to remove yourself from them.

Section: Broken links

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact our support team.