Why your store's emails land in spam, and the three settings that fix it

Most stores that land in spam do not have a content problem. They have a setup problem. Gmail and Yahoo check who an email is from before they read a single word of it, and if that check fails, the words never matter.

We learned this the hard way. When we tested a welcome flow from an account that sent from a gmail.com address, three emails out of three went to spam. The emails were fine. The sender was not.

The three checks every email has to pass

SPF: is this server allowed to send for you?

SPF is a list, stored with your domain, of the servers allowed to send email in your name. When Klaviyo sends for you, it has to be on that list.

DKIM: was the email changed on the way?

DKIM adds a signature to every email. The receiving inbox checks it against a key stored with your domain. If they match, the email arrived exactly as it was sent.

DMARC: does it all match the name in the From line?

This is the one most stores miss. DMARC checks that the domain in your From line is the same domain that passed SPF or DKIM. In our test, SPF and DKIM both passed, but they passed for Klaviyo's sending domain, not for gmail.com. DMARC failed, and the emails went to spam.

Gmail and Yahoo now require authenticated mail and a DMARC record from bulk senders. Without them, your emails can be marked as spam or rejected.

The fix, in three settings

1. Your own sending domain. In Klaviyo, set up a branded sending domain, like send.yourstore.com. SPF and DKIM then pass for your own domain.
2. A DMARC record. Add one DMARC record to your domain's DNS. Start with p=none, which only reports and blocks nothing, and make it stricter later.
3. Google Postmaster Tools. Free from Google. It shows how Gmail sees your domain, including your spam rate.

Then keep it clean

Setup gets you into the inbox. Habits keep you there. Send campaigns to the people who actually read them, and to the whole list only on big dates. Keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools under 0.1%, and never near 0.3%. Remove people who have not read anything in months.

None of this needs a developer. It is a few DNS records and a few settings, done once. But it has to be done before the first send, not after the first bad week.