My emails are landing in spam

Whether a campaign lands in the inbox or the spam folder depends on many factors: the recipient's spam filter settings, your sending domain's reputation, your message content, the sending IP reputation, and more. There is no single fix that guarantees inbox placement, but the steps below address the most common causes.

Step 1: Set up email authentication

Email authentication is the single most important factor for deliverability. Without it, receiving mail servers have no way to verify that your campaign was legitimately sent by you, and many will route it to spam automatically.

Flexmail uses three authentication records: SPF, DKIM and DMARC. These are DNS records added to your sending domain.

To check and set up authentication:

• Go to Settings > Add or remove senders
• Click "Set up authentication".
• At the bottom of the page, generate your DKIM keys (leave the selector as "flexmail").
• Click "Generate report" to download a text file.
• Send that file to your domain administrator. They will add the records to your DNS.
• Within 24 to 48 hours, the SPF, DKIM and DMARC indicators in your account will turn green.

Step 2: Run a message check

Flexmail's built-in message check analyses your message for common spam triggers before you send. Open your message and click Message check to run it.

For a more detailed external analysis, you can use mail-tester.com. Send a test campaign to the address it provides and you will receive a spam score with a breakdown of specific issues to fix, such as missing authentication, content problems, or link issues.

Step 3: Review your subject line

Spam filters check subject lines closely. Avoid the following:

• Spam trigger words: "promotion", "sale", "discount", "free", "act now", "limited offer", and similar commercial terms.
• Words in ALL CAPS.
• Excessive punctuation: multiple exclamation marks or question marks.
• Too many emoji.
• Misleading or vague subjects that do not reflect the email content.

Step 4: Check your message content

The content and structure of your message affects spam scoring.

Text and image balance

Aim for roughly 80% text and 20% images. A message that is mostly images with little text is a common spam signal, because spam filters cannot read images. A message that is entirely text is fine, but entirely images is not.

Fonts and colours

Limit yourself to two or three colours and two or three fonts in total. Count hyperlinks and bold text as visual elements. Overly decorated messages are flagged by spam filters.

Alt texts

Add alt text to every image. This helps with deliverability and also ensures your message is readable for recipients whose email client does not load images automatically.

Add a text version

A text version of your message improves deliverability and ensures readability on devices that do not support HTML, such as smartwatches. To generate one: click the gear icon next to your message, choose "Edit text version", and click Generate.

Step 5: Check your sender identity

Use a sender name that clearly identifies your organisation. If someone subscribed to your newsletter under one name and receives emails from a different name, they are likely to mark it as spam.

Make sure your sender address matches the domain your audience recognises. Using a personal Gmail or Hotmail address as a sender address for mass campaigns significantly reduces deliverability.

Step 6: Check your sending frequency

Sending daily campaigns increases the risk of spam complaints and unsubscribes. Email lists sent to daily are flagged by spam filters faster than weekly or monthly lists. Leave adequate time between campaigns, and consider whether every send is genuinely valuable to your audience.

Campaigns not arriving at internal contacts

If your campaigns are arriving for external recipients but not for people at your own organisation (using the same domain as your sender address), the issue is usually your company's mail server configuration.

Your internal mail server may be configured to assume it is the only server allowed to send email from your domain. When Flexmail sends a campaign from your address, the internal server rejects it as suspicious.

The solution is to whitelist Flexmail's sending range on your internal mail server. Ask your IT administrator to allow sending from the Flexmail SPF record: spf.flexmail.eu. This approach is safer than whitelisting fixed IP addresses, because Flexmail's IP ranges can change over time.

Common mistakes to avoid

Fixing content without checking authentication first

Email authentication has a bigger impact on deliverability than any content change. Always check that SPF, DKIM and DMARC are green before spending time adjusting your message.

Sending a re-engagement campaign to fix a spam problem

If your campaigns are already landing in spam, sending more campaigns will not fix it. Resolve the underlying cause first, then resume sending.

Ignoring spam complaint rates in your campaign reports

A spam complaint rate above 0.1% is a warning sign. Review your reports regularly. Contacts who mark your emails as spam are automatically blacklisted.

Next steps

• See "Sender validation and authentication" for the full technical setup of SPF, Sender ID, and DKIM.
• See "What makes a good subject line?" for guidance on writing subject lines that perform well.
• ·See "The balance between images and text" for message formatting guidance.
• See "Benefits of a text version of a message" for why a text version matters.