Why my emails land in spam (and how to get out)

Are you really in spam?

Nobody can tell you, recipient by recipient, whether an email landed in spam. You read it from trends: an open rate under 30% on a varied audience, a falling warm-up score, replies drying up.

Two checks first: open tracking must be on and your tracking domain must resolve, otherwise a 0% measures nothing (see here). And a test email sent to yourself doesn't count (see why).

1. Your mailboxes' provider

Emelia connects to your mailbox and your emails go out through your provider's servers. Its reputation becomes yours. It's the number one factor, far ahead of content.

Sending from Google to Outlook recipients, or the other way round, makes almost no difference: no need to try to match providers.

If your company already uses Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, ideally use a separate tenant for outreach.

2. Authentication: SPF, DKIM, DMARC

These three records prove to your recipients' servers that you really are the sender. They're set in your domain's DNS zone, following your provider's documentation.

To see their status in Emelia: Accounts page, hover the mailbox's warm-up score, click View details, then scroll down to Domain authentication.

12

• 1Status of MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC: Configured, Missing or To verify. The (i) icon explains each line.
• 2Re-check settings after every change to your DNS.

3. Domain reputation

• Your main domain: never run outreach from it. If something goes wrong, your quotes, invoices and client emails are the ones landing in spam. See Prospecting from your main domain.
• Too many mailboxes on one domain: spam reports add up on the domain, not on the mailbox. Stick to 3 mailboxes per domain (5 at most).
• A domain that's too young: with no history, it starts with a handicap. That's what the 2 to 3 weeks of warm-up are for.
• A domain with a past: a "new" domain may have been used before you bought it. Check it against blacklists (see below).
• A subdomain: it doesn't protect your main domain and causes MX issues. Buy real domains, close to yours, and redirect them to your website.

4. Sending IP reputation

With a shared hosting provider, sending IP addresses are shared between its customers. As soon as it detects campaign activity, it automatically moves the account to a pool of lower-rated IPs. It doesn't block your mailbox: it gives it a bad IP, and your warm-up score drops (for example from 100 to 70 in about ten days).

To be fair: a drop right after a campaign starts can also come from targeting or content. And a score of 70 is still usable. Until you switch providers, stick to 25 new contacts and 75 emails per day per mailbox, warm-up included.

Microsoft 365 and error 550 5.7.708 ("traffic not accepted from this IP"): the IP at fault is Microsoft's, never Emelia's, because a mailbox connected through the Microsoft connection sends via Microsoft's API. Microsoft refuses mail from IPs it considers low-reputation, especially on a new or trial tenant. Move to a paid licence assigned to each mailbox, wait about a day, then, if the error persists, ask Microsoft support for an exception from the admin center. Switch warm-up off in the meantime: every refusal makes the reputation worse. See Connecting Microsoft 365.

5. Volume and pace

Emelia imposes no technical cap: your provider, then your recipients' servers, are the ones that penalise excessive volume.

• 35 new contacts and 100 emails per day per mailbox at most, follow-ups included. 25 and 75 if warm-up stays on.
• About 20 emails per hour per mailbox: use a wide window (for example 8:30 am to 5:30 pm), Emelia spreads sends across it. A short window packs sends into bursts.
• One mailbox, one campaign (two at most, at different hours). The limits of each campaign add up on the mailbox.
• To send more: more domains and more mailboxes, never more emails per mailbox. Plan 5 to 10 mailboxes for about 5,000 sends a month.
• Repeated blocks from your provider: pause for 24 hours, then halve all your quotas.

6. Warm-up

A new mailbox needs 2 to 3 weeks of warm-up before outreach (10 to 15 days at the very least), even if its score already shows 100%. Then keep warm-up running during your campaigns: it maintains a balanced flow of incoming and outgoing email.

• Score above 90: all good. You can send from 80.
• Between 60 and 80: lower the campaign cadence on that mailbox.
• Under 60: something is wrong (provider, DNS, domain reputation) and needs fixing before you send.
• Warm-up switched itself off: find the cause before turning it back on, or it will drop again. See Warm-up turns itself off.

7. Content and links

8. Targeting

• Two or three contacts per company at most, and a shuffled list. Emailing one company in bulk triggers its security.
• Consumer addresses (Gmail, Hotmail, Orange, Wanadoo…) filter outreach more heavily, and Orange blocks it whatever your provider. You need business addresses to write to business addresses.
• An old or purchased list pushes bounces up, and bounces damage domain reputation. See I have too many bounces.

9. Blacklists

Public blacklists (Spamhaus, UCEPROTECT, SURBL…) list IPs and domains. Check your domain and your provider's IP on MXToolbox.

• Your domain is listed: fix the cause, then request removal from the list in question.
• Your provider's IP is listed: it's up to the provider to act. If it keeps happening, switch providers. At UCEPROTECT, level 2 is a problem, level 3 (which targets a provider's whole network) less so.
• Warm-up cannot get a domain blacklisted.

Getting a mailbox or domain back in shape

• 1. Stop campaigns on the mailbox for one to three weeks, or drop to 5 new contacts a day.
• 2. Keep warm-up running: the score recovers on its own. Switching it off doesn't help the score.
• 3. Fix what's wrong: DNS, content, tracking domain, volume per mailbox, provider.
• 4. Restart at a lower volume and watch the open rate step by step.

Changing providers doesn't reset everything: the domain keeps its age, and a short warm-up of the new mailbox is enough. Sometimes buying a new domain and creating a fresh mailbox is faster than repairing the old one.