Why do I find my emails in the Spam folder or I do not receive them at all?

There are 4 main factors in deliverability:

Permission
Domain reputation
Server Reputation
Content

Permission:

When you send an email, the email must have a 'from' email address. As your 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 you 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 your 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. NOTE: In ActiveDEMAND, all emails require CNAME records to be set up to register this permission:

To check to see if the permissions are set up correctly, you can review the records in <Administration, <Account Settings, <Account Setup Section, <VIEW WHITELABELING:




If you haven’t set them yet for a new account, follow the steps outlined in this article:

Integrating ActiveDEMAND with your website/email server

Outlook Issues / SPF Record
For the case when your company uses Outlook, you may find the emails that you send internally with ActiveDEMAND (i.e. testing, etc) end up in your junk folder. Do not be alarmed. It is the case that office 365 requires a bit of extra setup to allow others to send emails with your domain to your company. To ensure the emails are delivered internally, you might need to adjust your spf records. An SPF record is used to tell the world which servers can be considered as trusted. Using outlook/office 365, you will have had to set up an SPF record to allow Microsoft to send your emails.

Note: can only have one SPF record. Thus if you have one already, you will need to adjust it.

Here is a great tool for adjusting your spf record https://www.spfwizard.net/


Whitelisting IP Addresses With Office 365
To ensure that emails sent from ActiveDEMAND to Office 365 recipients are not incorrectly labeled as spam, we recommend adding our IP Address Ranges to the Allowed List in the Connection Filtering Policy within the Office 365 Exchange Admin Center (EAC).

This process is slightly different from other whitelisting as Office 365 limits the size of CIDR ranges to the /24 range and over. This article lists our IP addresses in ranges supported by the Office 365 administrator settings interface.

The main benefit of whitelisting is that your email will automatically bypass unnecessary spam filters (as you have sent the emails).

To add our IP addresses to the Office 365 "IP Allow List":

Sign in to Office 365 and click "Admin", then under "Admin Centers", click "Exchange"
Under the "Protection" list, choose "Connection Filter"
Click the "Edit" button which looks like a pencil
Choose "Connection Filtering" on the left side menu
Click the plus "+" symbol and add an IP range from the list below and click "OK"
Repeat step 5 until the IP ranges below have been entered
Check the "Enable Safe List" checkbox
Finally, click "Save"

Instructions for the new Exchange Admin Center:

Sign in to Office 365 and go to the "Security Center" https://security.microsoft.com/homepage
In the left side menu under “Email and collaboration” go to “Policies and rules”




Click the “Threat policies” option
Under “Policies” click “Anti-spam”
Click “Connection filter policy (Default)” so the options appear on the right side and then click the “Edit connection filter policy” link




Add our IP ranges from below to the “Always allow messages from the following IP addresses or address range” section
Check the “Turn on safe list” checkbox
Finally, click “Save”

This is a subset of our current IPs:

159.183.143.41
168.245.52.100
149.72.156.63
149.72.135.93
149.72.130.11
159.183.112.233
198.21.1.38
167.89.56.238
149.72.165.195
167.89.88.182
149.72.131.67
149.72.133.112
149.72.134.99
149.72.136.234
168.245.127.234
168.245.19.147
167.89.76.51
168.245.64.241
167.89.85.171
168.245.51.91



You can also add include:_spf.activedemand.com to your SPF record and this way you will always have the most up-to-date information. You can have multiple includes for example

include:_spf.activedemand.com include:_spf.freshsales.io

Doing the internal trust for the IPs will make your outlook server happy.



Domain Reputation
If a lot of spam has been sent via your domain, the domain will get a reputation that is less than desirable. One bad actor using your 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 you are sending emails from is shared, and others are sending spam, the IP address can get a bad reputation. Note, ActiveDEMAND uses a reputation-based IP pool system. The like actors are migrated to the appropriate pool of servers. ActiveDEMAND 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' your way into the top tier.

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

Please read our email terms of services that ALL users of ActiveDEMAND abide by. Terms Of Services

Updated on: 30/01/2024