My Emails Go to Spam

Spam placement happens for one of three reasons: authentication failures (recipient can't verify it's really you), sender reputation problems (TrekMail IPs or your domain have a recent bad-mail history with the recipient), or content/engagement signals (your message looks like spam, or your recipients aren't opening / are marking as spam).

This guide is a diagnostic walkthrough — not a generic spam-checklist. We're talking specifically about what to check in TrekMail.

Quick triage — where are you in the recipient's inbox?

The first thing to know: spam folders aren't all the same. Different mail providers use different signals:

• Gmail's spam folder — heavily reputation-driven. Spam there usually means Gmail has scored your domain or IP poorly in the last few weeks, often due to low engagement (recipients not opening your mail).
• Microsoft Outlook / Office 365's Junk folder — heavily authentication-driven. Junk there often means SPF/DKIM/DMARC misconfiguration on your side.
• Apple Mail (iCloud receiving) — between the two; uses both reputation and rules.
• Smaller / corporate mailservers — sometimes use commercial blacklists (Spamhaus, Barracuda, etc.).

If only one provider spam-folds you and others deliver fine, the issue is provider-specific. If everyone spam-folds you, the issue is on your end.

Check 1 — DNS authentication is complete

The single biggest cause of spam-foldering, especially at Microsoft. Run through the Checking DNS Status flow:

• MX — points to TrekMail's mail server.
• SPF — includes our sending IPs. Without this, Outlook will spam-fold or reject outright.
• DKIM — cryptographic signature. Without this, both Gmail and Outlook treat you with suspicion.
• DMARC — policy on what to do when SPF or DKIM fails. Start at p=none for monitoring; move to quarantine or reject only after you confirm legitimate mail is passing.

In the Domains list, you want every record showing a green tick. Anything amber or red is going to spam-fold you somewhere.

Check 2 — You're past the warmup curve

When you add a new domain to TrekMail, we apply a warmup curve automatically — the plan's sending limit is reduced for the first week:

The point of the curve is to build reputation gradually with major receivers. Sending 5,000 emails on day 1 from a brand-new domain is a guaranteed spam-fold (it looks exactly like spam-blast behaviour).

If you're trying to send at full volume in the first week, recipients see you as suspicious. Stay under the curve. Once you reach day 8 and have been sending consistently to engaged recipients, you have a baseline reputation Gmail/Outlook can build on.

If you have an existing reputation from another provider and switching to TrekMail, this curve still applies. Yes, it's frustrating; no, you can't skip it.

Full detail: Email Domain Warm-Up Rules.

Check 3 — Account is actually permitted at full volume

If your account has ever_paid=false (you've never had a successful charge), you're capped at lower safety limits regardless of plan:

• During the trial: 100/mailbox/day, 300/account/day, 25 recipients/message, 40 messages/hour.
• After trial without paying: 50/mailbox/day, 150/account/day, 25 recipients/message, 20 messages/hour.

These are well below the plan's listed limits. Hitting them sends rejects with rate-limit errors, but the more subtle effect is recipients see your domain in low volumes, building a slow reputation. As soon as your first payment clears, full plan limits apply.

Check 4 — Your list is engaged

Gmail's spam algorithms heavily weight engagement metrics: opens, replies, time-spent-reading. If you send to a list where most recipients:

• Don't open your emails.
• Mark them as spam (the dreaded one).
• Are no longer active (the address still exists but the person stopped checking it).

…your reputation tanks fast. After a few weeks of low engagement, every send goes to spam.

Practical fixes:

• Remove anyone who hasn't opened your mail in 90 days. Yes, it shrinks your list. Yes, your delivery rate goes up.
• Run unengaged contacts through TrekMail's Email Verifier before sending — pull out role accounts, catch-alls, and risky addresses.
• Send to people who specifically asked to hear from you. Bought lists are reputation poison.

Check 5 — Bounce rate is under control

If 5%+ of your sends bounce (especially hard bounces — "user not found"), every receiver downgrades your reputation. See Bounce Rate Too High for the full diagnostic.

Quick view: Domains page → click a domain → Email stats tab shows your bounce rate over the last 7/30 days. Healthy is under 2%. Above 5% is a problem. Above 10% gets you into deliverability-suspension territory (see I Can't Send Emails Check 7).

Check 6 — Your content doesn't look like spam

This matters less than reputation but still trips people up. Spam filters look for:

• Subject line in ALL CAPS or with excessive punctuation (!!!, $$$).
• Words classically associated with spam — "FREE", "URGENT", "ACT NOW", "WINNER", obvious obfuscation like "V|AGRA".
• Image-only emails with no text content. Spam filters can't read images.
• No plaintext alternative. TrekMail sends multipart by default if you use webmail; outbound from clients depends on the client.
• Too many links — especially link-shortened ones (bit.ly, t.co). Filters dislike URL shorteners in transactional/marketing mail.
• Mismatched display name — From: "Bank of America" but sending domain is freebies@example.com. Recipients' filters notice.

This used to be the dominant spam-fold reason in 2008. Today reputation dominates, but content still pushes borderline mail over the edge.

Check 7 — You haven't been blacklisted

Check mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx with your domain or the sending IP (find it in the Connection tab of any of your domains). The major blacklists are Spamhaus, Barracuda, Surbl. If you're on one:

• Spamhaus — the gold standard. Listed there = most of the internet treats you as spam. Their site has a removal-request form; if your listing is from a brief misconfiguration, removal is fast. If it's from repeated abuse, you need to address the underlying issue first.
• Smaller blacklists — some receivers consult, many ignore. Address them if they appear, but don't lose sleep.

TrekMail's outbound IPs occasionally get hit by deliverability events affecting all our senders. We monitor and resolve those internally — see the status page for active issues.

Check 8 — Test with a real spam-scoring tool

Send a single test email from your TrekMail mailbox to mail-tester.com:

1. Visit mail-tester.com, copy the unique address they show.
2. From your TrekMail mailbox, send a normal-looking message to that address (don't write "this is a test" in the subject — that itself is spammy).
3. Click "Check your score" on mail-tester.com.

You'll get a 10-point score breaking down:

• Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) — 4 points
• Content checks — 2 points
• Sender info — 2 points
• Misc tech — 2 points

Anything below 8/10 indicates something fixable. The breakdown identifies exactly which check failed.

For Gmail specifically, sign up at postmaster.google.com with your domain. Gmail Postmaster shows you their internal reputation rating ("High/Medium/Low/Bad"), authentication pass rates, and spam-complaint rate. This is the closest you get to Gmail's actual scoring.

Check 9 — Use Managed SMTP (TrekMail) rather than BYO

Paid plans default to TrekMail's Managed SMTP, which automatically:

• Signs every outbound message with your domain's DKIM key.
• Routes through warmed-up IPs with established reputation across major receivers.
• Aligns SPF correctly.
• Handles bounce processing.

If you've manually configured BYO SMTP (an external provider) instead, you're responsible for all of the above on the external side. Most BYO setups have at least one missing piece compared to TrekMail's managed flow.

For most users on Starter or higher, switch to Managed SMTP unless you have a specific reason to relay externally.

Understanding DMARC results

In your TrekMail DMARC reports, not every "failure" is a problem:

• SPF fail + DKIM pass = OK. Common when emails are forwarded through mailing lists or other relays — SPF breaks because the relay is a new sending IP, but DKIM (cryptographic signature attached to the message body) survives. DMARC passes if either SPF or DKIM passes. This is expected behaviour.
• SPF pass + DKIM fail = unusual. Investigate — might mean content modification by a relay, or a misconfigured DKIM record.
• Both fail = high risk. Either a misconfiguration or someone is spoofing your domain. Look at the source IPs in the DMARC report.

DMARC reports are XML files mailed daily/weekly to the address you specified in your DMARC record. TrekMail aggregates and visualises them under each domain's stats.

When everything looks right and you're still in spam

A few last things to check:

• List acquisition method. Bought lists, scraped lists, "we found your email on LinkedIn" lists — all are reputation suicide regardless of how good your tech is.
• Sender frequency. Going from 100 emails/day to 5,000/day overnight, even gradually within your plan limits, triggers reputation alarms.
• The recipient muted you. If they personally hit "spam" once, all future emails from you to them go to spam regardless of your reputation.
• You've been categorised as "promotions" on Gmail. This isn't spam, it's a different tab — many users treat it as "the place I never look", which is functionally spam. Plain-text-heavy, conversational, individually-addressed emails are more likely to land in primary than glossy newsletters.