Often the carefully curated marketing email that your subscribers have asked for is still marked as spam. It may be delivered to their spam mailbox, or worse, not delivered at all.
There are several ways to reduce the chances of this happening. I’m going to talk you through one of the more technical ways that could make a dramatic difference.
Don’t run away from the word “technical”. It’s straightforward and easy to do.
What email address are you sending from?
Before you start, you need to be sending email from a domain that does not end in generic domain name. Examples are hotmail.com, gmail.com, yahoo.co.uk etc.
This is because what you will need to do is access and change the DNS records for your domain. You will only be able to do this if you are using a domain that has been registered for you.
If you aren’t, your first step is to go to namecheap (affiliate link: https://plainsailingweb.com/go/namecheap-email-packages/). Register a domain name and buy one of their Private Email packages.
Where are your DNS records maintained?
Assuming you are now using the correct sort of email address, you will need to be able to log in to the account where your DNS records are maintained.
Start by looking in the account where your domain is registered. Look for the name server information. Unless it says there are custom name servers in use your DNS records will be set up in this account.
Otherwise see if you can find out by looking at the values for the name servers. That’s the account you need to access.
Find out the new values for your SPF and DKIM records
Next, log in to the account that you use to send your marketing emails from. The following instructions will differ depending whether you send through Mailchimp, Active Campaign, MailerLite, Mailjet or any other.
You need to find a section about setting up SPF authentication.
In my Mailjet account, it’s under account settings then Senders and Domains. In MailerLite, log in then click on your user icon and select Domains. I’d check in Mailchimp, but I deleted that account!
Once you find it, it should look like this, or something similar:
keep the window open, as you’ll need to copy from it and paste into your DNS records.
Put the two together
In a new window or tab, log in to the account your DNS name servers are pointing to.
In the list of records, look for a TXT record that beings with “v=spf1 “.
Replace the long string with the string shown in your mailing software and press Save.
Do the same with the strings for the DKIM records.
These records may only be recognised after some time. Eventually they will help your marketing email to be delivered to your subscribers’ mailboxes, not their spam folders.
Want some help?
Want some help or want me to do it for you? Just book a time that works for you and we'll set it up using Zoom and and a screenshare:
Power Hour £99
What could we get done? Some examples:
- Get you set up to use a business email address using familiar software such as gmail;
- Set up your DNS records so that your email works and your website can be seen;
- Improve your email deliverability so your emails are less likely go to spam;
- Add that code from eg, Google Analytics or Trustpilot, to your website that you've been meaning to figure out how to add;
- Add a custom blog post layout to your website;
- Give me the image and copy for that blog post. I'll proofread it, optimise and add the image and post it for you;
- Set up the Google My Business profile for your business (1 Power Hour);
- A taster session for your chosen website (1 Power Hour) - will include
- an audit,
- accessibility review,
- home page review and
- 30-minute walkthrough via Zoom;
- Set up Zapier to automate some mundane, repetitive tasks for you.
We may be able to achieve a few of these things, except where noted.
Can be done remotely via Zoom - or give me what I need (I'll ask) and let me get on with it for you.
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