If your emails keep landing in spam, here's why.
You send a quote and hear nothing back. Sometimes they went with somebody else, quite often 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 inconsistent, which is what makes it hard to spot. Mail to one client arrives, mail to another doesn't. Gmail lets you through while Outlook files you in junk. Then somebody mentions they found your invoice in spam a few weeks back.
None of that looks like a fault, so it goes unfixed for years. You get no 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 deciding what to do with your message, the server receiving it runs three checks against your domain. Never set them up and there's nothing there to check.
SPF
A list on your domain of who's allowed to send email as you. If your invoicing software isn't on it, those messages look like somebody pretending to be you.
DKIM
A signature on every message you send, which the receiving server checks against a key on your domain. It proves the mail came from you and nobody's tampered with it on the way.
DMARC
What you want to 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 email got setup years ago by whoever registered the domain, it worked fine then, and things got bolted on since. Accounting software that emails invoices, a booking system, a mailing list, the contact form on the website. Every one of them sends as you without ever being added to the list of who's allowed to.
The other common one is a domain that's drifted. Moved between providers, old settings copied across half right, nobody checks afterwards because mail carries on working for most of the people you write to.
Providers have got stricter too. Gmail and Yahoo raised their requirements in 2024, and the toughest rules are aimed at people sending thousands a day, but a domain with nothing set up gets treated with more suspicion every year.
What I do about it
First I look at what your domain publishes now and what your mail is doing, which tells us whether this is even your problem. Then the records: everything that legitimately sends on your behalf gets authorised, signing goes on, and DMARC goes in on monitoring so we can see what's happening before anything gets blocked.
The reports coming back show everything sending as your business, including the ones you'd forgotten. Once they're all accounted for and passing I tighten the policy up, and anyone forging your domain gets rejected instead of landing in your clients' inboxes.
I'll tell you what was wrong in plain English. It all 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 in monitoring mode, which watches without blocking anything. Nothing gets enforced until the reports show your real mail is passing.
Do I have to change email provider?
Almost never. This is the settings on your domain rather than who hosts your mailbox, so whatever you're on 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, neither finishes the job for you, and neither knows about the other things sending on your behalf: your invoicing tool, your booking system, the contact form on your website.
How long does it take?
The records are quick. DMARC then wants a few weeks in monitoring mode so we can see everything that sends as you before anything gets enforced. Rushing that is how people end up blocking their own invoices.
How do I know if I have a problem at all?
Replies that never come, clients mentioning they found you in junk, mail to one provider arriving while another swallows it. Send me your domain and I'll tell you what your records say right now.
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's doing. If nothing turns out to be wrong I'll say so. I aim to reply within a working day.