18 Things To Know For Better Email Deliverability
We all use email in our day to day life but when it comes to business email management getting frustrated is a very common scenario. Have you witnessed the following things?
1. Emails are going to SPAM
2. Emails are getting rejected, blocked!
3. Domain reputation is getting poor day by day
4. Confused with the configurations of Email Suits (Google Workspace,
Zoho etc.) with Mass Mailing (SMTP)
5. Domain and links are blocked in mail’s body and signature
This article is for you, I have spent lot of time on this as on my current company we faced similar things and contacted Google Support, Facebook groups but didn’t get actual solutions. Finally after spending couple of days I have been able to solve these issues.
Google and other mail services are very strict while implementing sending policies and if they find any issues with mails and associated attachments and links, then they block those mails.
After getting blocked on the domain, ip reputation goes down and future mails go to spam.
For serious phishing attacks on servers, they can blacklist the entire domain which will not allow us to send links.
Here are the number of steps we can follow to protect emails from being banned/blocked and also to keep the domain/ip reputation high.
- Add the website into Google Search Console and Verify using DNS as Domain Property.
Add the website into Google Postmaster Tools and verify.
https://search.google.com/search-console
https://postmaster.google.com/
Postmaster tool is very useful to check the domain reputation, authentication and spam rate, based on these statistics we can change the way we send mails for marketing or for transactional mails.
2. Setting up DNS records DKIM, SPF, DMARC Records , PTR (Reverse DNS) perfectly. Here is the link to study. Also we can open an account on Cloudflare, AWS Route 53 to manage DNS quickly.
DKIM: Domain Keys Identified Mail which is used for domain ownership verification to protect email senders and recipients from spam,spoofing and phishing.
SPF: SPF means Sender Policy Framework record is a txt record in the DNS where we can define from which servers, ip address mails can be sent and also define what to do if unmatched servers, ip addresses try to send mails.
DMARC: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance is a txt record where we can get mail notification for rejected, quarantined mails.
PTR: PTR is basically the Reverse of DNS entries. When we visit https://skill.jobs , our browsers try to find the associated IP address to send and receive requests. From domain to ip is normal DNS workflow, reverse DNS is the opposite. Here is more details on this.
3. Always use an SSL certificate and never use any non secured links. URLs with HTTP must be redirected to HTTPS.
4. Clean the server from any kinds of malwares, to check in case of Cpanel we can use
ImunifyAV
https://checkphish.ai/
https://scanner.pcrisk.com/
5. Check domain and ip whether these have been blacklisted or not using following sites
http://multirbl.valli.org
https://www.dnsbl.info/
https://mxtoolbox.com/
https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/checkmx/
There are couple of domain blacklist websites where user can report and those sites index sites and email senders typically rejects links if they found on the blacklists. We need to check whether our site is listed or not. If listed, then we need to find the reasons and apply for delisting.
This site finds many blacklists, spam database sites at a time.
One follow and a clap inspire me to write more
6. Analyze Mail headers to check inconsistencies.
a. Go to any sent mails and in the right side three vertical dots click and you can find View/Show Originals and click that and copy the headers.
b. Check headers at https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx
c. Check headers also at Google’s mxtoolbox
https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/messageheader/
By looking at the analyzed reports you can get the idea what are the problems.
7. Check Google Transparency Tool
https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search
If you are blocked in Gmail/Social App Login, then after cleaning the servers, delisting the Domain/IP from blacklist, submit to google for false positives.
https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/?hl=en
Please report here with a couple of direct accounts and devices. Do not do that if the site is not blocked and malware/phishing contents are not removed.
8. If the site is hosted on VPS, then check linux users and enable security.
9. If the hosting also has mail accounts, then disable if not used.
10. For Email Marketing we should use subdomain mails ( contact@email.example.com )
or Secondary domain examplemails.com
11. Each mail must have an unsubscribe link
12. Each mail user must be opted in for taking that service. Unknown data can hamper mail delivery and reputation.
13. Never use any third party URL Shorteners. Ignore them like bitly, cutly etc. Or Own developed URL shorteners.
14. Email contents must not contain direct words collection of Data
15. Email signatures should not contain too much information
16. To send bulk mails avoid Mailmerge,Margo etc tools. Use SMTP relays like SendGrid, SendinBlue,Amazon SES, InfoBip SMTP Mail Relay Service.
17. If we need to send bulk mails using Google Interface, then we must use Google Groups.
18. Using Google Mails for SMTP is not a good idea and can be banned. Either we should use SMTP or third party email services or self hosted email servers for SMTP (password reset mails, mail notification of systems etc. )
That’s all today! Checkout my linkedin for more articles.
