Email Deliverability & Spam

Sometimes you might find that emails aren't landing in your recipient's inbox. The problem of legitimate emails falling into spam folders is one that we all constantly face. 

We don't have 100% control over which emails get through your recipient's spam filters but we do things to help minimise the chance of this happening.

Why do emails get marked as spam?

Mail servers often accept messages that they have no intention of delivering, because they don't want to give spam servers any help in determining if their spam will be delivered or not.

There are two points in the email system where spam may be filtered:

1. When the email is accepted by the email server.  In this case the email is discarded immediately, without being placed in a spam folder. This is less common of a problem as measures such as SPF records and DKIM (DomainKeys) are used by FLG.
2. When the email hits the user's email inbox (or to be more precise, hits the user's spam folder). Preventing this type of filtering is more to do with the content and context of the email. Please take a look at the advice further down in this article about spam filtering techniques.

What does FLG do to help?

We subscribe to 'feedback loops' (FBL's)

This means that email service providers tell us when their recipients report FLG emails as spam. This information is available in your account (we explain how to get it below). We also monitor the ratio of emails that are reported as spam and take action where too high a proportion of a user's emails are marked as spam.

Unsubscribe links are automatically added to emails

If an email template is being sent either by a bulk action or through a workflow or lead action, if the {LEAD_UNSUBSCRIBE} variable is not found, an unsubscribe link will automatically be added to the bottom of the email. This template variable is replaced at the time of sending, so will show in its none substituted form when you view processed templates. 

Email addresses that fail are automatically unsubscribed.

Large amounts of email sent to invalid email addresses can cause mail servers to blacklist IP addresses. To help keep mailing lists clean we automatically unsubscibe email addresses that fail due to the email address being invalid.

We follow email best practices

As long as you have receive and allocate email replies and bounces selected in your user/site settings, messages are signed/certified with both SPF and DKIM (DomainKeys). 

We integrate with some email clients to add unsubscribe buttons within the interface for bulk/automated emails. We make sure that all our outgoing mail IP addresses have reverse DNS records. All this means better delivery rates and trust for emails sent through FLG.

Over 100 email server blacklists and SenderScore is monitored regularly

Action is taken to whenever necessary to quickly restore our reputation.

What can I do to reduce the chance of my emails being marked as spam?

• Set up Email Domain Verification to authorise FLG sending emails from your domain.
• Ask your recipients to whitelist your email address. This is usually as simple as them saving you as a contact in their address book.
• Make sure you include an unsubscribe link in all your emails. These are automatically added if missing when you send an email either by a bulk action or via a workflow or lead action.
• Avoid spam trigger terms. Many spam filtering techniques work by searching for patterns in the subject or body of messages filtering words such as "money", “offer”, “why pay more”, "cash back”, etc. 
• Keep images to a minimum - you shouldn't use a high number of images or large sized images.
• Avoid the use of excessive punctuation and all caps in the body or subject of your emails.
• Don't use a red font in your emails.
• Test your email templates to ensure they aren't being classed as spam by running your email through an online spam checker. E.g. www.mail-tester.co.uk
• Check if DMARC is setup for your email domain as that can affect the emails sent from the system. If DMARC is used, please contact the support team to discuss how FLG can accommodate this.

If all else fails we'll certainly do our best to help. We will need to see a copy of the email headers for a received email that was marked as spam. The steps to get the headers are covered on this page for most email clients. Once you have the headers please contact the support team.

Getting reports on spam & email tracking

Use the Email Delivery Summary Report in the reports area to see how many of your emails are being marked as spam. If you have email tracking switched on (Settings > Configuration > Email) you will also see statistics on opens, clicks, replies, etc.