Why Your Emails Land in Spam — and How to Fix It (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)

If your invoices and replies keep landing in customers' spam folders, the cause is almost always three missing DNS records. Here is what they are and how to fix them.

Few things cost a small business more quietly than email that does not arrive. Quotes, invoices, and replies that land in spam make you look unprofessional — or unresponsive — through no fault of your own. The good news: the fix is almost always the same three DNS records.

SPF — who is allowed to send as you

An SPF record lists the mail servers permitted to send email for your domain. Without it, receiving servers cannot verify that your message really came from you, so they treat it with suspicion.

DKIM — a tamper-proof signature

DKIM adds a cryptographic signature to every message, proving it was not altered in transit and really came from your domain. Missing DKIM is a major spam trigger.

DMARC — your policy and protection

DMARC ties SPF and DKIM together and tells receiving servers what to do with mail that fails. It also stops scammers from impersonating your domain to defraud your customers — a real and rising threat.

How to check yours

Our free Email Deliverability Checker inspects your domain's SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX records and tells you exactly what is present and what is missing — in plain English.

Get it fixed once, properly

These records live in your DNS and are easy to get subtly wrong. We configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC correctly and verify your mail reaches the inbox. It is part of our business email and hosting work. Tell us about your setup and we will sort it out.

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