To improve the email deliverability and avoid your MailChimp emails go to spam folder there is a simple way to do it. I’ve spent about half an hour to understand why my emails got in the SPAM folder, so you don’t have to do it. In order to increase delivery rate to subscribers there is one more thing that needs your attention.

 

Why my emails go to spam?

There are many reasons to “why” the emails are going to spam. Someone might report it as spam, there are broken links in the email, it’s missing unsubscribe headers, alt attributes,you don’t have a good text-to-image ratio, etc. All this can affect the success of your email being send to the inbox of your subscribers.

When using Mailchimp services you need to do two things: verify and authenticate your domain. In order to do that, you need to configure the SPF record. This way your server authorize Mailchimp server to send emails from your domain. It might sound difficult but in fact in not that hard. Just adding the some modification to your DNS re records will do the trick.

SPF records: Authenticate your domain

In order to finish and verify Mailchimp you need to have access to your DNS records and to your Mailchimp account.

  • Go to Mailchimp>Account>Settings>Domains. If you are already verified, click Authenticate and a pop-up window will reveal the instructions.
  • Go to your domain in the DNS Editor and there you should be able to find and existing SPF record. Depending on your server, it could be a TXT record similar to this “v=spf1 inlcude:google.com ~all”.

 Create/Modify SPF

Click edit or modify and add the spf record indicated in MailChimp instructions.

“v=spf1 include:servers.mcsv.net ?all”

You can only have one SPF record. So, if there is an existing one, like my example above, you’ll need to add the new record that should look like this:

“v=spf1 include:google.com include:servers.mcsv.net ~all”

That will ensure that you’ll get your email delivered.
~all – mails from hosts not specifically allowed are not permitted to send mails.
?all – not specified host is neutral and nothing can be said about the validity of it.

 Create CNAME

Create a CNAME record for k1._domainkey with the value of: dkim.mcsv.net. If you need to set time to live TTL just use the default (usually 144000) or check other records you have.

Success! Email was delivered!

Click Authenticate Domain. Depending on your server, it can take up to 24/48 hours for the changes to propagate. Usually is just  a few moments, but it can take longer sometimes. If that is the case don’t worry, just come back later at MailChimp and click authenticate again.