Emails we send from our Outlook being sent to spam

[Btzeroapp]

We have only recently started using HubSpot for email marketing and haven’t sent a ton of emails so far. Our clients are very security-conscious, and many use software like Mimecast to filter or quarantine potential spam. Recently, our CRO noticed that an email from his Outlook (not one that we sent through Hubspot) has been going to the organization’s spam folder. Could our email marketing affect emails that we send from our regular Outlook account?

[Ben_M · Accepted solution]

It shouldn't and usually the situation is the other way around.  They are different addresses that you are sending from.  Have you setup all of the DKIM/SPF records for your Hubspot email so that they are being authenticated from your domain? See this KB article for help with that: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/cos-general/how-to-connect-your-email-sending-dom... .

Also for wherever you are sending your outlook email through, what is the sender score of that IP address?  https://www.senderscore.org/  If your IP has a low sender score that will affect deliverability.

[Btzeroapp]

Thanks, Ben. I hadn't set that up yet. So how have emails to our clients send through HubSpot been recognized by their spam filters, and how will they be recognized once these are connected?

I checked the sender score of our domain, and it was fine.

[Ben_M]

If you don't do the setup for Hubspot emails they will all be received from the email address you provide with "on behalf of..." with information about the Hubspot at the end.  This tends to get flagged by many spam filters.  By doing the SPF/DKIM setup you remove the on behalf of and digitally sign the emails that use your domain to validate them to the recipient server which helps them not be pulled out as potential spam.

[giovannimyles]

Does adding the DNS record mentioned help the SPF record to pass? I'm on a paid plan and added the SPF record to our domain but we still get SPF failures. I reached out to support and they gave me a long list of IP's to allow but it still doesn't cover all of the various IP's that the emails come from. Because of this SPF fails. Just wondering if this would help resolve it.

[Ben_M]

The direct link to setting up the SPF can be found here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/do-i-need-to-add-hubspot-to-our-spf-record .  This is an additional step to the previously linked article.