Why are my marketing emails going to spam in HubSpot?

Marketing & Content Hub Email Marketing Tool
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Hi, I’m looking for best practices for setting up email automation workflows and improving email deliverability in HubSpot.

I am new to hubspot and just sent out a marketing email. I am finding out that most of them went to straight to their spam folders and I am wondering if there is a direct fix for this? it even went to the spam folder of employees which doesn’t make sense to me. Anyone else having this issue?

Moderator Note: this post was reviewed for relevancy and optimized for clarity on 4/7/26. Thank you for your contributions to the HubSpot Community!

2

Hi @AReed3,

This is a common problem, unfortunately. Could you confirm that you have connected your email sending domain and set up email authentification (SPF, DMARC)? Both are considered best practice and should help with your email deliverability and would be the first steps towards better deliverability.

In general, similar to SEO, you want to try to pass on as many positive signals about your content as possible. The eventual decision what to do with that content rests with the service provider. With that in mind, here is a list of things that I’d recommend reviewing:

Connect your email sending domain

Use a DMARC policy with HubSpot

Only email contacts who for whom you have a legal basis to communicate

Validate emails before sending to avoid hard bounces at all costs (e.g. Neverbounce, Zerobounce)

Remove unengaged contacts from list regularly for higher engagement rates

Avoid as many spam trigger words as possible

Test the spammyness of your email

@kaburke wrote an excellent email deliverability listicle and @natsumimori also compiled a lot of great resources here. I highly recommend you check out both. Over time, email service providers should recognize you as a trustworthy sender. The issue could be that in the past, some recipients have already marked your emails as spam or that email service providers noticed high bounce rates from you.

For your employees specifically, there are steps for allowlisting IP addresses if they’re not receiving HubSpot emails.

If you have already taken some of these steps or more context to share, let me know.

Best regards!

3

Karsten, am I able to connect my email sending domain and use a DMARC policy if I’m on the free product? I have tried to follow the instructions, but don’t seem to have the option to connect email.

thanks,

max

4

Hi @AReed3 ,

For this, they need to allowlist the IP address via which they are sending the emails. This can be done by their IT team itself. Once the IP address gets allowlisted the emails will start getting delivered to the inboxes. Pre-requisites - The email domain should be set up correctly

- SPF & DMARC/DKIM should be set-up correctly

Thanks

Swayam

Grazitti Interactive

5

Hi @AReed3 ,

So if the emails are going to the spam folders, this is normally related to their email security filter. For that, we would need to reach out to the recipients to have them allowlist HubSpot marketing email ip address as shown here.

Normally, when the emails go to spam, we do have quite limited control over that. However, if the recipients were to move the email manually into their inbox and save the setting, all emails moving forward would go into their inbox instead.

Hope this helps!

If we were able to answer your query, kindly help the community by marking it as a solution.
Thanks and Regards.

6

Regarding the Spammyness tester. I tried to send a test email to that account via hubspot, but hubspot required that I verify the email. I can’t do that, as it is the email of the tester and I don’t have access. Can you please advise a work around?

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Use Hubspot “Send test email” and send the message to yourself. Then forward it (remove Marketing Email Preview text from SL) to spammyness email address.

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FYI regarding the Karsten Köhler accepted solution… when following the instructions in the links he provided for adding a DNS record, first of all you cannot just set up as an email sender unless you have paid HubSpot. You can attempt to add your domain. However…the values given to put into your DNS record at your host failed to work or verify. It will return typo (I copied and pasted so there was no typo) and record-not-found error messages. So as of today, I still cannot use HubSpot to do something as simple as send one to one personal emails with no images or links or spam language that don’t go straight to their spam inboxes.

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Hi @Sharpsburgian and all,
Thank you for reaching out to the Community!
I understand that your sales emails are going to spam and this can be frustrating.
The reply that @karstenkoehler shared is great and very useful. It is directed to all Community Users, so it may indeed include solutions for free users as well as for users with paid subscriptions.
I can confirm that connecting the email sending domain is only possible in premium versions of HubSpot.
However, I’d like to share these resources that might help you:
- The solution from @Zakiya on this post “Emails sent in hubspot goes to spam”
- The solution from @aliciaw on this post “Hubspot emails going to SPAM”
- The solution from @CHansen7 on this post “emails going to the spam box”
If you have issue connecting your domain to HubSpot, can you please share screenshots?
The more info, screenshots (without sensitive/confidential information), and details you can provide, the better the Community can assist.
Here is an article that might help you “Troubleshoot your domain connection”.
I also wanted to invite a couple of subject matter experts to this conversation @Ben_M, @AdamLPW and @NicoleSengers, doy ou have any tips to share to help @Sharpsburgian, please?
If anybody else has anything to add and/or share, please feel free to join in the conversation :slightly_smiling_face:
Thank you and have a great day!
Best,
Bérangère

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good

11

To prevent your emails from ending up in spam and to be sure that they arrive in the main mailbox, I invite you to first check the emails via a tester such as mailtester.ninja

It’s a small job but it will prevent your emails from ending up in spam.

Best,

12

As Karsten rightly mentioned, This is Not a Hubspot problem. It’s just how email system has always been working.

Emails with no reputation go straight to spam to prevent spoofing.

You’ve to use email warm up to build your email reputation overtime.

13

To add to the helpful advice already shared: sometimes, even with all best practices in place, deliverability issues still occur due to factors outside your control, like recipient mail server settings or broader domain reputation. It can also help to periodically review your email content for trigger words, keep your contact lists clean, and encourage recipients to allowlist your address. Consistency and patience are essential as you build trust with inbox providers over time.

14

There are quite a few reasons this could be happening — SPF/DKIM/DMARC not set up correctly, low domain reputation, list hygiene issues, or even just how the email content itself is structured.

So it really depends on your specific setup, so there’s no one-size-fits-all fix.

I actually offer a free deliverability consultation to HubSpot users if you want me to figure it out for you.

All the best!
Please note - this post has been edited by a Community Moderator to ensure it adheres to our Community Guidelines.

15

Getting caught in spam filters usually happens because your sender reputation is low or your technical setup is missing things like SPF and DKIM records. If those aren’t set up right, Gmail and HubSpot might look suspicious to the receiving server. Typical mistakes include using too many salesy words or having a bad link-to-text ratio in your body copy.

A lot of people in marketing circles mention using Unspam Email to check for these hidden technical errors before hitting send. It helps you see if your IP is blocklisted or if your formatting is triggering red flags. Keeping your list clean and only emailing people who actually engage is the best way to stay in the primary inbox.

What is your Unspam Email spam score?