If your emails keep landing in spam, here's why.
You send a quote and hear nothing back. Sometimes that's because they went with someone else, but quite often it's because the email never reached them, and nothing bounced to tell you.
Email setup for small businesses and sole traders, from Bridgend, across South Wales and remotely anywhere in the UK.
How you can tell it's happening
It's usually inconsistent, which is what makes it so hard to spot. Mail to one client arrives and mail to another doesn't. Gmail might let you through while Outlook quietly files you in junk. Usually someone eventually mentions they found your invoice in their spam folder a few weeks earlier.
None of it looks like a technical fault, so it tends to go unfixed for years. You don't get an error message, and as far as you can tell the email left your outbox and that was that.
The three things mail servers check
Before it decides what to do with your message, the server receiving it runs three checks against your domain. If you've never set them up, there's nothing there for it to check.
SPF
A list in your domain settings of who's allowed to send email as you. If your invoicing software isn't on that list, its messages look like someone pretending to be you.
DKIM
A signature added to every message you send, which the receiving mail server checks against a key on your domain. It proves the email really came from you and that nobody's tampered with it on the way.
DMARC
Your instructions for what should happen when the first two checks fail, plus reports telling you who's sending mail as your business. Most small businesses have never set this one up at all.
What usually turns out to be wrong
It's rarely all three at once. The usual pattern is that email got set up years ago by whoever registered the domain, it worked fine at the time, and then things were bolted on over the years: accounting software that emails invoices, a booking system, a mailing list, a contact form on the website. Every one of them sends email as you, without ever being added to the list of who's allowed to.
The other common one is a domain that's drifted. It gets moved between providers, the old settings are copied across half-correctly, and nobody checks afterwards because email carries on working for most of the people you write to.
Providers have also got stricter. Gmail and Yahoo raised their requirements in 2024, and although the toughest rules are aimed at people sending thousands of emails a day, domains with nothing set up get treated with a bit more suspicion every year.
What I actually do
First I look at what your domain is currently publishing and what your mail is really doing, which tells us whether this is your problem in the first place. Then I fix the records: everything that legitimately sends on your behalf gets authorised, signing gets switched on, and DMARC goes in on monitoring mode so we can see what's happening before anything gets blocked.
The reports that come back show everything sending mail as your business, including the ones you'd forgotten about. Once they're all accounted for and passing, I tighten the policy up, and anyone forging your domain gets rejected rather than landing in your clients' inboxes.
I'll explain what was wrong in plain English. Everything stays in your own accounts, registered to you, so you can take it elsewhere whenever you like.
Questions people ask first
Will my email stop working while you fix it?
No. The changes go in one at a time, and DMARC starts off in a monitoring mode that watches without blocking anything, so nothing gets enforced until the reports show your real mail is passing.
Do I have to change email provider?
Almost never. This is about the settings on your domain rather than who hosts your mailbox, so whatever you're using now can usually be fixed where it is.
I use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Do I still need this?
Usually yes. Both give you the parts to switch on, but neither finishes the job for you, and neither knows about the other things sending on your behalf, like your invoicing tool, your booking system or your website contact form.
How long does it take?
The records themselves are quick. The honest answer is that DMARC should then sit in monitoring mode for a few weeks so we can see everything that sends as you before anything gets enforced, because rushing that is how people end up blocking their own invoices.
How do I know if I have a problem at all?
The usual signs are replies that never come, clients mentioning they found you in junk, and mail to one provider arriving while another swallows it. Send me your domain and I'll tell you what your records currently say.
Send me your domain and I'll take a look.
Tell me what you've been seeing and I'll have a look at what your email is doing. If it turns out nothing's wrong, I'll say so. I aim to reply within a working day.
Tell me what's happening