topic Emails going to junk. in Email Deliverability

Emails going to junk.

AChobot — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 19:48:20 GMT

I just started a new HubSpot account for a client. We sent out the first email. Everyone on it met CASL standards, but there was a high bounce rate (I assume we started with some emails that weren't accurate, or maybe business addresses of people who had changed jobs, etc). My client is now saying that the 1-to-1 emails they are sending are going to junk.

For context:
(1) Her inbox is not connected to HubSpot.
(2) The email address being used for marketing emails vs her 1-to-1 work emails are different, but the domain of the marketing email address and her work address are the same.
(3) The DNS records all seem to be properly connected and authenticated.

I've been using HubSpot for a while, but I've never seen this before.

Could a high bounce rate on the HubSpot marketing email cause 1-to-1 emails to go to junk?

Re: Emails going to junk.

JOB3 — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 22:49:04 GMT

Hello @AChobot, thanks for reaching out to the community about this! A high hard-bounce rate in marketing emails does not automatically send your 1-to-1 emails to junk, but it does hurt your sender reputation. Mailbox providers use that reputation for all email you send, so poor performance in marketing sends can make your 1-to-1 messages more likely to land in spam.

Some general recommendations to improve 1:1 email deliverability include optimizing the content of the emails and also sending emails to a clean list of contacts as @karstenkoehler mentions on a similar thread here.

I would like to include some of our Top Experts on 1:1 Email and Email Marketing to help us, @Kevin-C @Phil_Vallender @OPerek-Clark do you have any tips on best practices @AChobot can implement to improve email deliverability ? Thank you in advance !

Josefina, Community Moderator

Re: Emails going to junk.

karstenkoehler — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 05:03:18 GMT

Hi @JOB3,

While the ways marketing emails and sales emails are fundamentally different, I'd be surprised if strong negative signals on a sending domain of one way aren't affecting the other. To some extent, that's likely what has happened here.

On top of that, especially in sensitive industries HubSpot sales email tracking can trigger spam filters. Disabling it might be a temporary or even long-term option for better deliverability: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/connected-email/turn-off-one-to-one-email-tracking-or-attachment-logging

Things you could try:

Set up a subdomain for one-to-one (sales) emails
Don't send one-to-one emails from HubSpot but from their email client, without the extension, just using the BCC address: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/connected-email/log-email-in-your-crm-with-the-bcc-or-forwarding-address

Best regards

Re: Emails going to junk.

JOB3 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 14:57:23 GMT

Thank you for this invaluable insight @karstenkoehler ! @AChobot you can review to Karsten's recommendations here which lists steps you can take to increase deliverability of your emails. Let us know if you have any questions about implementing these 🚀- Josefina, Community Moderator

Re: Emails going to junk.

AChobot — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 16:02:15 GMT

Thank you for all the information. I have something to add. After inquiring further, the emails going to junk are from new clients. We are also making an assumption that it was just this particular sender that had emails go to junk. No one else in the organization is reporting this issue so far. Does it make sense that this would only impact new email recipients?

Re: Emails going to junk.

AChobot — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 16:04:23 GMT

One to one emails aren't being tracked. They aren't linked to Hubspot at this point in time.

Re: Emails going to junk.

JOB3 — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:03:14 GMT

Hi @AChobot, can you clarify if in your last question: are you referring to your team's marketing emails going to the contacts' spam folder or are you asking if your team's 1:1 emails are going to the contact's spam folder?

Re: Emails going to junk.

AChobot — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:20:41 GMT

The 1:1 emails are going to junk. I did inquire with an IT friend of mine, and they noted that the SPF (txt) configuration was created in a way that only allowed HubSpot emails. There was no declaration for the servers to allow email to come from Gmail without being rejected. Does this make sense?

Re: Emails going to junk.

JOB3 — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:19:22 GMT

Hi @AChobot thanks for clarifying ! Unlike marketing emails, 1:1 emails do not use HubSpot's sending network. Instead they use the network of the email provider who owns the connected inbox , such as Outlook or Gmail. This is documented on our KB here as well. To your point about new email addresses, emails from these accounts can sometimes be marked as potential spam by the recipient's email provider either because the address is not fully active or is missing some key configurations. Continuing to work with the Email Administrator for the affected new user's email address would be a good next step here. I'm adding some Top Email Experts from the community to see if there's anything else they would recommend in this instance; @karstenkoehler @sam_baybrad @TomM2 what best next steps would you recommend @AChobot to prevent outgoing emails from a user with a new email address ending in their contact's junk/spam folder ? - Josefina, Community Moderator

Re: Emails going to junk.

TomM2 — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:22:13 GMT

Hey @JOB3 the only input I will add here is that some email filters will take tracking information within the email into account when filtering. This means that even though tracked emails are not sent from the HubSpot servers, the tracking information within the emails will trigger a spam filter.

Unfortunately this is a preference set by the receiving user. If a regular email sent from your mailbox goes through and a tracked email goes to spam then it means the receieving mailbox is set to set tracked emails as spam. There is no way to force a tracked email passed these filters, regardless of what system you use. The answer to this is to not track opens/clicks on these emails as the tracking pixel itself is what is triggering these to go to spam for these recipients.