This article helps you figure out why your emails are landing in your recipients' spam folders instead of their inbox, and how to fix it. It's for anyone sending business email through Titan who wants better delivery to the inbox. After following these steps, your domain's reputation and email setup will be in better shape, and fewer of your emails should be flagged as spam.
Improve your domain's reputation
If your domain doesn't have a strong sending history, receiving mail servers are more likely to flag your emails as spam. You can improve this over a few days by sending genuine emails and getting positive engagement.
| alert-warning | Don't use a subject line or content like “test” or “spam” for these emails, and write at least 500 characters of real content. Short or suspicious-looking emails can be flagged as spam themselves, working against you. |
- Send a few genuine, conversation-based emails to other addresses that use the same email provider as the recipients you're troubleshooting for, for example Gmail addresses.
- Ask the recipients to mark each email as Not Spam if they land there and to add your address to their contacts. This helps train their email provider's filters not to flag your business email as spam.
- Further, ask the recipient to reply to each of those emails individually. Replying to genuine emails helps improve your domain's reputation.
- Repeat this for 2–3 days.
- You should see fewer of your emails landing in spam by the end of this period.
Check your email authentication records
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are settings that prove your emails really come from your domain. Incorrect or missing records are one of the most common reasons emails land in spam.
- Confirm your SPF record is set up correctly.
- Confirm your DKIM record is set up correctly.
- Confirm your DMARC record is set up correctly.
Avoid spam filter triggers in your email content
Check your email content for anything that looks like a common spam pattern:
- Make sure every link in your email works and goes where you say it does.
- Proofread your subject line and body for spelling errors.
- Avoid writing in all capital letters, using excessive punctuation, or using red font.
- Avoid spam trigger words and phrases such as free, cheap, pre-approved, $$$, 100% free, and urgent.
What you'll see when it's working
As your domain's reputation improves and your authentication records are set up correctly, more of your emails reach your recipients' inbox instead of spam. This can take a few days, since email providers gradually adjust how they treat your domain.
Troubleshooting
Problem: Your emails consistently land in recipients' spam folders.
Cause: Your domain's SPF, DKIM, or DMARC records aren't set up correctly, so receiving servers can't verify your emails really came from you.
Fix: Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for your domain using the links in Check your email authentication records above, then resend a test email to check whether it reaches the inbox.
Problem: Your emails land in spam even though your authentication records are correct.
Cause 1: Your domain has a weak sending reputation, often because of low engagement or previous spam complaints.
Fix: Follow the steps in Improve your domain's reputation above.
Cause 2: Emails sent from the third party platform are not connecting with Titan server due to which verification checks fail.
Fix: For any third party platform from which you plan to send emails, ensure you use the Titan SMTP settings so that all emails sent from the third party platform pass all the verification checks.
Problem: Some emails from your domain land in spam, but others don't.
Cause: The email's content contains spam triggers, such as broken links, spelling errors, a misleading subject line, all-caps text, excessive punctuation, red font, or spam trigger words.
Fix: Rewrite the email using the tips in Avoid spam filter triggers in your email content above.