Troubleshooting Email Deliverability Issues
We live in a world where spam filters have to exist. But sometimes, spam filters can get in the way of legitimate correspondence. If you find some of your emails in your recipient's spam folder, arrive late, or sometimes don't arrive, this article can help you with troubleshooting email deliverability issues and improve the deliverability of the messages you send.
How to Troubleshoot Email Deliverability Issues
Problems with Email Lists, Newsletters, and Campaigns
Issue: Bluehost email servers are designed for personal and professional correspondence, not marketing or promotional email. If you send out to an email list, you must use an EMS (Email Marketing System) such as Constant Contact, even if it's just a small newsletter. It's risky to manage an email list manually on your own. Laws like the CAN-SPAM Act and CASL set time limits on opt-out requests and strict requirements for information disclosure and users' privacy. Violation of these laws carries heavy penalties. A simple mistake can lead to a disruption of your email services, your domain name getting blacklisted, or worse.
Note: Please also note the relevance of data privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA. Read the articles below for more information:
Solution: Use an Email Marketing System like Constant Contact. The system will keep you well within the applicable laws and best practices, leaving you to promote your cause worry-free. Email Marketing Systems can give you crucial analytics to see how effective a campaign is, do A-B testing, and see what works while maintaining the highest possible delivery rates for your campaigns.
For more information on leveraging the right tools for email marketing, see Getting Started with Email Marketing.
Issues with Personal Correspondence
Issue: If your domain name is never used in an email marketing campaign and your emails sometimes have deliverability issues, the recipient's incoming email filter may be blocking your messages.
Hackers and spammers use malware and keyloggers to steal email usernames and passwords from computers and email applications. These email accounts are then used to send out as much spam as possible. One compromised email account can ruin the reputation of an entire domain name or email server. This can lead to a severe service interruption while we work with other hosts to remove the server from their blacklists — which can take anywhere from weeks to months.
Solution: Use outgoing spam filters to protect your email accounts from spam. These filters rely on reports we receive from other hosts. Our system analyzes these reports to determine common content or senders' confirmed spam by several independent reports. This helps our spam filters protect your domain name and mail servers from blacklisting without interrupting legitimate correspondence.
Domain Reputation and BlackLists
Issue: The blacklisting of emails can cause problems when trying to send emails from your server's IP address. Various email filtering services blacklist IP addresses based on their specific criteria. Each service has its process for getting removed from the blacklist. Solution: Please see the articles below to troubleshoot.
Solution: Please see the articles below to troubleshoot.
Problems with Email Authentication
Issue: If you don't set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, this may cause problems with email deliverability, as other mail servers will likely reject emails originating from your mail server. That is because they cannot confirm the authenticity of the sender, and there is a possibility that spammers might impersonate you.
Solution: Check out the articles below for instructions to set up email authentication.
- How To Setup a DNS SPF (Sender Policy Framework) Record
- What is a DKIM record?
- How to Implement Google's New Email Authentication Requirements
Email Deliverability Best Practices
| Check Your SPF Record | SPF is a type of DNS record that notifies the recipient's mail host which mail servers are authorized to send email from your domain name. Most modern spam filters consider the SPF record when determining if a message should be marked as spam or disregarded altogether. To find out more about SPF records and how they can be implemented at Bluehost, see SPF Records. |
| Use Links Sparingly | Links increase the risk of being flagged by a spam filter. This is especially true of shortened links that spammers often use to hide domains or keywords that would otherwise trigger filters. |
| Simple Signatures | Keep your email signatures simple. Spam filters will look for problems with HTML code, extra tags, and HTML code copied from Microsoft Word. If you choose to include an image, be sure that the most important parts of the signature (like contact information) are text-based only. Some email clients, like Gmail, don’t display images by default. |
| Limit Attachments | Keep your attachment size and quantity low whenever possible. A majority of email and web communication is done via phones and mobile devices, which have limitations for bandwidth and speed. Outgoing messages can be up to 35MB in size; however, many hosts limit 25MB or fewer incoming messages. If large files need to be sent via email, sometimes it's best to upload the file to your hosting account and email a link to the files rather than attach them to the message. |
| Be Careful with Forwarders | Forwarded email is typically treated with more scrutiny than regular correspondence. It's best to use email forwarders for Bluehost-hosted addresses to other Bluehost-hosted addresses only. You can set up a forwarder to forward messages automatically to an external email address, but doing so is often harmful to the domain name's reputation. If any spam messages are forwarded, rather than the original sender being marked as spam, the Bluehost forwarding address would be regarded as sending the spam, affecting your overall deliverability rates. If you are forwarding messages to a Gmail account, consider using Gmail POP3 as an alternative. If you are forwarding messages to another external email host, consider accessing your messages with an email client or webmail. |
Summary
Problems with email deliverability may be frustrating, but with the right tools and practices, you can ensure that your emails reach your intended recipients. Follow the tips and advice in this guide to improve your email deliverability and keep your communication lines effective. Partnered with a professional email from Bluehost in your arsenal, you can ensure a better experience for you and your email recipients.
If you need further assistance, feel free to contact us via Chat or Phone:
- Chat Support - While on our website, you should see a CHAT bubble in the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Click anywhere on the bubble to begin a chat session.
- Phone Support -
- US: 888-401-4678
- International: +1 801-765-9400
You may also refer to our Knowledge Base articles to help answer common questions and guide you through various setup, configuration, and troubleshooting steps.