Getting found on Google
Why Your Emails Land in Spam Even If They're Fine
Learn the three domain records that decide if your email reaches the inbox or spam, and what order to set them up in.
You write the email carefully: the subject line doesn't shout, the copy is clear, no typos. You send it, and some of your customers never see it anyway, because it landed in spam without you knowing and without them saying a word.
The copy isn't the problem. What decides whether an email lands in the inbox or in spam gets settled before you write a single word: how the domain you're sending from is set up.
What the inbox checks before it reads anything
When your email hits Gmail or Outlook, the receiving server asks a question before it even looks at the content: does this domain actually say this email is theirs?
That question gets answered by three records you set up once, in your domain's settings (what's called DNS), not in every email you send. They're called SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and if you don't know what those are, it's because nobody explained them to you, not because they're complicated.
SPF is the list of who's allowed to send email on your behalf: your own email provider, and nobody else. DKIM is an invisible signature attached to every email that proves nobody tampered with it along the way. DMARC is the instruction you give the inbox that receives it: if an email claims to be from me but fails SPF or DKIM, don't trust it, send it to spam or reject it.
Without these three, your domain says nothing about itself. And a domain that says nothing about itself looks identical to one a scammer is using to impersonate a real business. The inbox, to be safe, sends it to spam.
- 1SPF: who's allowed to speak for you
In the settings where you manage your domain, you add a TXT record (a line of text in that settings panel) listing your email provider. Just one: two separate SPF records cancel each other out and break your outgoing mail. - 2DKIM: the signature on every email
Your email provider turns this on and gives you a key to paste in the same place. Without this step, anyone could copy the look of your emails and pass themselves off as you. - 3DMARC: the final instruction
A third record that says what to do if something fails. Start by asking it to just report problems (a setting called "none") for two weeks, then switch to rejecting once you've confirmed all your real mail is passing clean.
The mistake of sticking with the email you started with
If you're still emailing customers from a Gmail or Yahoo account, none of this applies to you: you can't set up SPF, DKIM, or DMARC on a domain that isn't yours. Why that's worth fixing is covered in Ditch Gmail: Email Your Customers From Your Own Domain. The point here is different: even with your own domain, if nobody set up these three records, you're in the exact same spot as with the Gmail account.
- Emails go out, but the inbox has no way to confirm they're really yours
- Some land in spam with no warning and no clear pattern
- Anyone could send email pretending to be your domain
- The inbox verifies the send before deciding where it goes
- Legitimate emails land in the main inbox reliably
- An impersonation attempt gets rejected before it reaches your customer
Which one to pick: Set up all three, not two. SPF without DKIM still leaves room for an email to get flagged as suspicious, and without DMARC nobody actually acts on that information.
- You know what SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are, and why the inbox checks them before your copy
- You have the three records, in order, to hand to whoever manages your domain
- You know to start in report-only mode (none) and only switch to reject once real mail is passing clean
- If you switch email providers, you know the SPF record needs updating that same day
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