Is SPF Preventing Your Emails From Being Delivered?

Are your emails not reaching their intended audience? If so, it could be the result of Sender Policy Framework (SPF). It’s important for your overall email success to know how to quickly determine if this is the culprit.

We’ve all been told to not click on emails unless you know they are coming from a legitimate person or sender. But as scam artists become better at phishing and posing as senders, methods are put in place to stop these scammers are working against legitimate companies and ISP’s in the process.

What is SPF?

SPF authentication is in place to stop infected emails from reaching your inbox and ensures the sender is who they claim to be. SPF authentication allows companies the right to send from the IP address associated with that email provider. Emails can be authenticated by either the email service provider or web hosting company.

How do legitimate companies avoid getting blocked by SPF?

It’s important that merchants get their email authenticated though whatever platform is deploying the emails, whether it’s your email service provider or web-hosting company.

Merchants should also purchase a domain, authenticate it, and stay away from sending emails through services like Yahoo to make sure their emails are getting to subscriber’s inboxes.

How can merchants comply with SPF?

First off, make sure you are verifying and authenticating your email properly. Companies should “set up test accounts for the four major ISPs (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and Hotmail) to ensure deliverability.”

There are websites that offer services, which check to see if email authentication is working. It is relatively easy to run tests through the major authentication providers. 

How do you ensure deliverability?

Authentication isn’t always just about direct deliverability – it’s about protecting your brand so that you are not mislabeled a scammer. Use an email service that provides reports on deliverability to see if your emails are making it to the inbox or spam folder in order to make email drastically more effective.