Getting Emails Through

infoodle sends your emails out through SparkPost, our email delivery partner, but whether those emails actually land in your recipients' inboxes depends on choices you control: how clean your recipient list is, what the email content looks like, and whether the domain you send from is set up correctly. This article covers what you can do to keep your delivery rate high. It does not cover what to do when a specific email has already failed to send. For that, see Failed Emails.

Role Permissions

• Contact people by email

Keep your recipient list accurate

This is the single biggest factor in whether your emails get through. Mailbox providers such as Gmail and Outlook track how an address behaves over time, and a list full of addresses that no longer exist or no longer engage counts against you.

Two things mailbox providers do to check whether your list is current:

• Honeypot addresses: some providers create addresses that were never given out to anyone. If an email arrives at one of these, the provider knows the address was harvested or guessed rather than genuinely collected, and treats the sender as a spam risk.
• Recycled addresses: providers sometimes reissue an address that has been unused for a long time to a new owner. Continuing to send to it after it changes hands looks the same as emailing someone who never opted in.

Tips to keep your list healthy:

• Only email people who have directly given you their address and agreed to hear from you.
• Watch engagement. A recipient who has not opened or clicked anything from you in around 12 months is unlikely to still be reading, and keeping them on the list adds risk without adding value.
• Add a captcha or similar check to public sign-up forms, so automated bots cannot add junk addresses to your list.

Write content that will not trigger spam filters

Most everyday content is fine. The situations that cause problems are specific: a link to a site that is already known for spam, or a link where the visible text does not match where it actually goes (link masking). Avoid both, and keep your subject lines and content a fair description of what the email actually contains.

Set up SPF and DKIM for your sending domain

SPF and DKIM are DNS records that prove to a receiving mail server that a message claiming to come from your domain was genuinely sent on your behalf. Say your email address is fred@example.org: example.org is your domain, and it is example.org's DNS settings that need the SPF and DKIM records added, not anything inside infoodle.

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): lists which mail servers are allowed to send email for your domain. Because infoodle sends your email through SparkPost, your domain's SPF record needs to include SparkPost's sending servers.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): attaches a digital signature to each message that the receiving server can check against your DNS record. It is a stronger proof than SPF and works alongside it.

Neither record is compulsory. Receiving mail servers use them as a positive signal when they are present, but do not reject a message just because they are missing. Setting them up simply improves your standing with mailbox providers over time.

What happens if your domain is not set up

infoodle keeps a list of the sending domains that have been set up for your organisation. Click or hover on Contact on the main menu bar on the left, then click Email. Click New email to open the compose screen: the From field there shows a status icon next to each of your email addresses to indicate whether its domain is on that list.

If you send from an address whose domain is not on that list, infoodle does not block the send. Instead, it automatically rewrites the visible From address to one at mail.infoodle.com so the message still has a chance of being delivered, and uses your reply-to address so replies still reach you. This is a safety net, not a substitute for setting up your own domain: an email that arrives from a mail.infoodle.com address rather than your own domain looks less trustworthy to your recipients and to their mail provider.

The compose screen tells you when this will happen before you send: pick an address whose domain is not verified, and a note appears next to the From field showing the exact mail.infoodle.com address your email will be rewritten to. Once an email has sent, the Sent & Scheduled list and the per-email report do not show which From address was actually used, so the compose-time note is the place to check this, not something you can look up afterwards.

Common questions

Do I have to set up SPF and DKIM before I can send emails?

No. You can send email from infoodle without either record in place. Setting them up improves how mailbox providers treat your email over time; it is not a requirement to send.

Can I add or check my verified domain myself in infoodle?

Your sending domain is set up with infoodle support rather than through a settings screen you manage yourself. Contact infoodle support with the domain you want to send from and confirmation of who can make changes to that domain's DNS settings. Support will confirm the SPF and DKIM records needed and add the domain to your account once those records are in place. Because this involves a DNS change on your side as well as ours, allow some time for the back-and-forth rather than expecting the domain to be ready the same day.

What is the difference between the sending domain, the tracking domain, and the return path domain?

When infoodle support sets up a domain for you, it can cover three separate roles: the sending domain (what appears after the @ in your From address), the tracking domain (used for link and open tracking in the emails you send), and the return path domain (where bounce responses come back to). Support will talk you through which of these apply to your setup.

Why does my email sometimes show a mail.infoodle.com address instead of my own?

This happens automatically when the domain in the From address has not been set up as described above. It is expected behaviour, not an error, and it keeps your email deliverable while you get your own domain set up.

Next steps

Review your recipient list for addresses that have gone quiet, and contact infoodle support to get SPF and DKIM set up for your sending domain if you have not already. Together, these are the biggest levers you have for keeping your emails out of the spam folder.