Email from a new domain going to spam? How to build sender reputation

You have a new domain name, your mailbox works and SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up correctly. Still, your first emails land in the Spam or Junk folder at Gmail or Outlook. With a new domain this happens a lot: the big mail providers do not know your domain yet, so they play it safe. In this article you read how a spam filter decides, how to check that the technical side really is in order and what you can do yourself to build trust within a few weeks.

Why email from a new domain goes to spam

Gmail and Outlook decide for every message whether it goes to the inbox or to spam. They look at three things:

SPF, DKIM and DMARC are the entry ticket: without all three, your email is often rejected or treated as spam. They prove who the sender is, but they say nothing yet about whether recipients want your email. A filter learns that from the sender reputation of your domain. Opening, replying and adding a sender to your contacts count in your favour. Marking a message as spam counts against you.

A domain that is a few days or weeks old has no history yet. Spam filters are careful with unknown domains, because spammers often register a new domain, send from it for a few days and then drop it. So your email is technically fine, but the filter does not know yet whether it can trust you.

Short test messages make this harder. An email with the subject "test", a single line of text and no signature, sent to an address your domain has never emailed before, looks to a filter like a trial message from a spammer. That is why the very first test emails to your own Gmail or Outlook address often end up in spam.

First check that SPF, DKIM and DMARC really pass

Working on your reputation only makes sense when the technical side is right. With hosting at LJPc and your domain's DNS with us, we set up the SPF record, DKIM and DMARC for you by default. If another party hosts your domain's DNS, the records belong there; read how in Domain registered elsewhere? How to point it to LJPc hosting.

You can see whether the checks pass in a message that arrived, even if it is in spam:

1. Open the message in Gmail on your computer, click More (the three dots) next to Reply and choose Show original.
2. At the top you see the results for SPF, DKIM and DMARC. If all three say PASS, your email provably comes from your domain and the cause is reputation. Read on in the next section.
3. If you use Outlook.com, open the menu with the three dots on the message and view the message details. In the Authentication-Results line, look for spf=pass, dkim=pass and dmarc=pass.

If it says FAIL or one of the three is missing, the problem is technical and building reputation will not help. Go to the part about email that ends up in spam in How to fix email problems, or, for email sent by your website, to Contact form not sending email? For a score with an explanation per check, use mail-tester.com: send a message to the temporary address the site shows, with a subject and a few sentences of text, the way you normally write.

Keep your DMARC record at p=quarantine. The policy tells recipients what to do with email that fails the checks; your email already passes them. A strict policy shows that you protect your domain well.

How to build trust

Have recipients mark your email as good

The strongest signals come from the people you email. Always move a message out of spam, including a test email to yourself, and ask your first recipients to do the same:

• Gmail: open the Spam folder (in the menu on the left under More), tick the message and click Not spam at the top. Then add the address to Google Contacts: Gmail does not put email from contacts in spam.
• Outlook.com: open the Junk Email folder, select the message and choose Not junk. Then add the address or your whole domain under Settings, Mail, Junk email, in Safe senders and domains.

A reply to your email is a strong signal too: a conversation that goes back and forth shows that your email is wanted.

Start with people who expect your email

In the first weeks, mainly email customers, suppliers, colleagues and people you know. They open your messages and reply, and that builds your domain's reputation fastest. Start with a small number of messages a day and increase it gradually. Google advises the same: start with a low volume to engaged recipients and avoid sudden spikes.

Write real messages, also when you test

• A clear subject and a few sentences of real text, instead of "test" with an empty message.
• A signature with your name, your company and your website on the same domain as your email address.
• Links to your own website. Link shorteners and lots of links to other domains make a filter suspicious.
• Text next to your images, so your message can be read without pictures. Keep the subject calm, without capitals or rows of exclamation marks.
• Attachments mainly in a conversation where the recipient expects them.

Send everything properly from your own domain

Email from a fixed address with a fixed sender name, through your LJPc mailbox in webmail or in your email app with ljpc.email as the outgoing server. If another service also sends email on behalf of your domain, such as your accounting software, your web shop or a newsletter service, set up DKIM for your domain there and add the service to your existing SPF record. Read how in How to add DNS records from an email or marketing service. That way all email from your domain passes the checks and every message you send builds the same reputation.

Give it a few weeks

When you email people who know you in the normal way, your domain is usually known to the big mail providers within a few weeks. The more recipients open your email, reply to it and move it out of spam, the faster that goes.

How to keep the build-up on track

• Hold off on a newsletter to your whole contact list. Lots of email at once from an unknown domain looks exactly like what spammers do. First build a few weeks of reputation with your everyday email and then send a newsletter through a newsletter service.
• Only email people who want to receive your email. Bought or old address lists lead to more spam reports and addresses that no longer exist, and both cost reputation.
• Edit the existing SPF record instead of adding a second one. Two SPF records make SPF invalid, and then the check fails.

Do you send a lot of email or newsletters?

Gmail and Outlook set extra requirements for senders who send more than 5,000 messages a day to their users. Then SPF, DKIM and DMARC are all three required (at LJPc they are set up by default). For marketing email and newsletters, Gmail also asks for an unsubscribe link that lets recipients unsubscribe in one click, and for a spam rate below 0.3 percent; Google advises staying below 0.1 percent. A mailbox is not meant for those numbers: it has a sending limit. Send newsletters through a newsletter service and set up DKIM for your own domain there.

If you send a lot of email to Gmail addresses every day, Google Postmaster Tools shows whether your domain meets Gmail's requirements and how many recipients mark your email as spam. You confirm there that the domain is yours with a TXT record. Google mainly shows data for large volumes; with a few emails a day you will see little.

When is something else the cause?

• You get an error message back. If the recipient refuses your message, you receive a bounce with an error code instead of an email in spam. That code points to the cause; see Email client errors.
• After a few weeks of normal emailing your email still goes to spam, while SPF, DKIM and DMARC say PASS. Then create a ticket in the customer portal at portal.ljpc.nl/en/tickets/new, with the recipient's address and the time of a message. We then check whether one of our outgoing mail servers is on a blocklist and arrange the removal if needed. If you work with a sub-account, you need the Create tickets permission for this; the main user gives it to you under My account, on the Sub-accounts tab.
• You receive a lot of spam yourself or you are missing an incoming email: read Spam in your inbox: how to report spam and recover quarantined email.

What LJPc takes care of

With hosting at LJPc and your domain's DNS with us, SPF, DKIM and DMARC are correct from day one. Your outgoing email is signed with DKIM and goes through our outgoing mail servers, which have their own PTR record. Your domain starts with a complete technical foundation, and with your own email you build the reputation on top of it within a few weeks.