Why Are My Emails Going to Spam? Fixes

Why are my emails going to spam?

The mailbox provider makes the call, not you. Gmail, Outlook and corporate filters score each message on a few signals. Is the sender who it claims to be? What has this domain and IP done before? Do recipients want this mail? Does the message itself look like bulk spam? If any one of these fails badly, everything else counts for less. Perfect copy won't rescue a message whose DKIM signature fails. Clean authentication won't rescue a domain that recipients keep reporting as spam.

Most spam-folder problems come down to one of the causes in the table below. Each has a symptom you can see and a check you can run today.

Cause	Typical symptom	How to check	First fix
SPF fails or is missing	Mail is accepted but goes to junk at most providers	Authentication-Results header shows spf=fail, softfail or none	Publish one SPF TXT record that includes every service sending as your domain
DKIM missing or signed by someone else's domain	dkim=pass, but the d= value isn't your domain	Compare d= in the header with the domain in your From address	Publish your sending service's DKIM key on your own domain
DMARC fails alignment	dmarc=fail even though SPF or DKIM pass	Header shows dmarc=fail with header.from=yourdomain	Make SPF or DKIM pass for the same domain as the From address
Poor domain or IP reputation	Placement got worse over weeks without any setup change	Reputation dashboards at the mailbox providers	Lower the volume, stop sending to unengaged contacts, remove complaint sources
Bad list	Hard bounces such as user unknown, plus spam reports	Bounce notices and their Status codes	Remove hard-bounced addresses and drop purchased or scraped lists
Sudden volume spike	A new or quiet domain sends many messages in one day	Compare daily sends against the domain's history	Ramp volume up gradually per mailbox

How do I check why my emails are going to spam?

Diagnose before you change anything. Changing your copy, your DNS and your volume all at once means you'll never learn which change mattered.

1. 1 Send a real message from your normal sending setup to a Gmail address and an Outlook address you control. Don't use a test button that routes through a different server.
2. 2 Open the message and view the raw source. In Gmail that's 'Show original'. In Outlook, open the message properties or view the source.
3. 3 Find the Authentication-Results header. Read three values: spf=, dkim= (with its d= domain) and dmarc= (with header.from=).
4. 4 If any of them says fail, softfail, none or neutral, stop here and fix DNS first. SPF checks whether the sending server is authorised for the envelope domain, DKIM checks a signature on the message, and DMARC needs SPF or DKIM to pass for the domain in your visible From address.
5. 5 If all three pass, read your bounce notices. The Status and Diagnostic-Code fields tell apart a dead address, a temporary deferral and a policy block.
6. 6 Then check your reputation data and your daily volume. Find out whether placement dropped when a new list or a bigger send went out.

Each of these checks has its own guide on this site. Bounce notices are covered in email bounce codes and their causes. The DNS side is in SPF, DKIM and DMARC for cold email senders.

Which tools show why mail lands in spam?

No single tool sees your placement at every provider. Each one shows one provider's view or one layer of your setup. The table compares four common options on the same points: what they look at, what you need to use them, and where they stop.

Tool	What it looks at	What you need	Where it stops
Google Postmaster Tools	Gmail's view of traffic from your domain, including reputation and spam-report data	A domain verified through a DNS record, plus enough Gmail traffic for data to show	Covers Gmail recipients only. Low-volume senders may see empty dashboards
Microsoft SNDS	Outlook.com's view of traffic from specific sending IPs	IPs you can register, which in practice means dedicated IPs	IP-based, so it's of little use on shared IP pools. Outlook.com only
Mail-Tester	A single test message: authentication, content and blocklist lookups	Send one message to a generated address	A one-off snapshot. It doesn't show how real recipients react
MXToolbox	DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX) and blocklist status	Your domain name, plus the DKIM selector for DKIM lookups	Checks your setup, not where your messages actually land

Use a DNS checker to confirm the records, a test message to confirm a real send passes, and Postmaster data to watch reputation over time. Reading reputation scores is covered in more depth in sender reputation: check, build and fix.

Why are emails from me to me going to spam?

This is a common complaint in Microsoft's support forums, and the cause is usually mechanical. Say you send from a service such as a newsletter tool, a CRM or a website form, and it uses your domain in the From address. Your own mail server checks that message like any other. If that service isn't in your SPF record, and it doesn't sign DKIM with your domain, DMARC fails. Your own mailbox then treats your own domain as spoofed. The fix is DNS, not a mailbox setting: authorise the service in SPF and publish its DKIM key on your domain.

There's a second cause when the mail keeps returning to junk after you move it. A rule, a blocked-senders entry or an admin-level quarantine policy is overriding your manual move. Check the mailbox rules and the junk settings before you touch DNS. What doesn't work: adding yourself to safe senders while DMARC still fails. That hides the symptom in your inbox, and your prospects' servers still see the failure.

Why does a cold list send mail to spam?

The list causes more damage than the copy. Old addresses produce hard bounces. Purchased and scraped lists can contain spam traps and role addresses that nobody asked to hear from. Contacts who don't recognise you hit the spam button instead of deleting. Mailbox providers read high bounce and complaint levels as a sign that you don't know your recipients, and they mark your domain down for it.

• Remove every address that hard-bounced with a permanent failure status after the first bounce. Don't retry it.
• Verify addresses before the first send, not after your domain has absorbed the bounces.
• Don't import contacts you can't explain the source of.
• For recipients in the EU, check the legal basis first. Germany's Unfair Competition Act (UWG) restricts advertising email without prior consent, and the GDPR governs processing of personal data. Whether you meet those rules depends on how you collect and use the list, not on the tool you send with.
• Spread sends across days. A mailbox that goes from quiet to hundreds of messages looks like a compromised account.

Volume per mailbox has its own guide: how many cold emails per day per mailbox.

Do sales follow-up emails go to spam?

Follow-ups go through the same filters as first emails. They also add complaint risk, because every extra message to someone who didn't reply is another chance for a spam report. Here's how each common follow-up search connects to spam placement:

• Sales follow up email template: a template is safe when it sits in the same thread (In-Reply-To and References headers pointing to your first message), includes an unsubscribe option, and has no fake 'Re:' on a message that never had a first part.
• Follow up sales email: send it from the same domain and mailbox as the first email. Switching to another domain for the follow-up breaks the thread and starts reputation from zero on the new domain.
• Sales email follow up templates: vary them per recipient. Many identical bodies going out in a short window look like bulk mail to content filters.
• Sales follow up email: stop after a hard bounce, an unsubscribe or a 'not interested' reply. Following up after any of these is a common cause of spam reports.
• Sales follow up email examples: short plain-text examples with one question and no link shorteners are easier for filters to read than image-heavy HTML. Link shorteners are often shared with spammers and can drag your reputation down.

Copy-ready versions for no-reply, post-call and breakup situations are in the sales follow-up email templates guide.

How EmailFlow OS sends: your Brevo account, your domain

EmailFlow OS handles personalised AI video email for B2B cold outreach — a EmailFlow OS product. You record one video and upload it to EmailFlow OS. Then you connect your own Brevo account and sending domain and import your prospect list into EmailFlow OS. EmailFlow OS creates a personalised version of that recording for each recipient, not each company. Each version goes out from your own inbox, through your Brevo account and your sending domain. Nothing is sent through a shared platform sender.

For diagnosing spam-folder placement, that means every check above points at things you control. The Authentication-Results header shows your domain. The SPF and DKIM records are the ones you published for Brevo. The reputation in Postmaster Tools belongs to your domain alone, not a pool shared with other senders. EmailFlow OS can't decide where a message lands, because the receiving server does that. It does keep the setup you'd need to fix under your own name. Read how this works on the EmailFlow OS personalised video email page.

Questions people ask

? How do I unspam my email address?

A sender can't remove itself from someone else's spam folder. Only recipients can, by marking a message 'Not spam'. What you can do is fix the cause: make SPF, DKIM and DMARC pass for your From domain, remove hard-bounced and complaining contacts, and lower your daily volume. If your domain or IP is on a blocklist, follow that blocklist's own delisting process after you fix the cause.

? Why should you never delete spam emails?

Deleting doesn't teach the filter anything. Marking a message as spam, or a wrongly filtered one as 'Not spam', sends a signal back to the provider. Legitimate mail also lands in spam sometimes, so check the folder before you empty it. With real spam, don't click its unsubscribe link: that can confirm to the sender that your address is active.

? How do I stop my messages from going to spam?

Fix things in this order. First authentication: SPF, DKIM and DMARC passing and aligned with your From domain. Then the list: no purchased, scraped or bounced addresses. Then volume: a steady ramp per mailbox instead of sudden spikes. Copy comes last. A message that fails DMARC will be filtered whatever it says. A passing one can still be filtered if recipients keep reporting it.

? How do I change my email from spam to inbox?

As a recipient, open the message in the spam folder and choose 'Not spam' (Gmail) or 'Not junk' (Outlook). Add the sender to your contacts or safe senders if you trust them. If the same messages keep returning to spam after that, a mailbox rule or an admin quarantine policy is overriding your choice. Or, for mail from your own domain, DMARC is failing.