Whether emails are delivered to inboxes is a result of technical settings and best practices. On this page we explain one-time settings that your IT person or team needs to implement and what you need to do on an ongoing basis to maximize inbox placement as you send emails to your contacts.
Technical settings (one-time implementation)
These settings only need to be implemented once by the IT person or team who manages your domain. Mail servers check for the presence of these settings in the background and may block emails if they aren't set up correctly.
The following entries in the DNS of the domain you're sending emails from impact inbox delivery. It's best practice to implement all three settings even though DMARC and SPF may not be required in all cases.
DKIM: Required by everyone
DomainKeys Identified Mail verifies that emails you send are coming from you rather than from a third party impersonator. Envoke provides you with a DKIM code for your sending domain. Learn more and view setup instructions.
DMARC: Required if you send over 5,000 emails per day
The Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance policy specifies how to handle emails that fail authentication. This policy is created by your organization. Learn more and view setup instructions
Even though Google and Yahoo only require DMARC if you send over 5,000 emails per day, we recommend that as a best practice DMARC is set up even if you send fewer emails. The 5,000 limit may change and other providers may add DMARC as a requirement. It's best to be proactive about this.
SPF: May be required, depending on your internal configuration
The Sender Policy Framework contains a list of servers and services that are authorized to send email via your domain. Emails sent from Envoke pass SPF verification by default but your internal email policies may require that additional SPF records are added. Learn more and view setup instructions
If the above entries are in place and emails are still not arriving to inboxes you may need to whitelist Envoke's sender IP addresses or contact your internal IT for additional support.
Best practices (ongoing)
Send emails that are of interest to your audience. Subscriptions allow contacts to manage their content preferences.
Personalize your emails using list segmentation, merge fields and dynamic content.
Do not send emails to unsubscribed contacts. When you migrate to Envoke from another provider, be sure to import unsubscribed contacts and mark them as unsubscribed in Envoke. When you send emails from Envoke, unsubscribed contacts are automatically excluded from every email you send. An exception is when you're sending regulatory or mandatory content.
Ask your contacts to add your sender email (the "from email") to their address book or safe senders list and to check their custom spam filtering rules that may block your emails.
Related articles
Steps to troubleshoot internal inbox delivery.
The inbox delivery overview page explains what Envoke is doing to maximize inbox delivery and when we can and cannot help.
Failed emails, called bounces, are automatically handled to filter out invalid emails. Read about email bounce management here.
Failed emails are automatically re-sent in an attempt to maximize inbox placement if the failure wasn't permanent - not a hard bounce.