Overview
No one likes that uneasy feeling of sending an important email then praying it did not end up in their spam folder. Yes, you can tell them to white-list your email but that is a pain and unprofessional.
You can reduce emails going into the spam folder by having your SPF(explained below) setup properly for Zoho CRM or other Zoho apps.
Enter your website below to instantly know if you SPF is setup properly for Zoho in North America. If your SPF has issues you can fill out the form at the bottom and you will be sent an SPF that works for free.
Sending Email Problem
Sending email has no built in authentication, which mean you can pretend to be Bill Gates or anyone. They call this email spoofing.
The Solution
To prevent email spoofing, email servers use protocols like SPF, DKIM and DMARC which provide “email authentication”. The less authenticated an email is the greater chance it end up in the spam folder.
How SPF Works with Zoho
While it appears that emails are sent from your domain (mycompany.com) they really go through Zoho’s domain (zoho.com, transmail.net, zcsend.net). Same thing for Gmail and Microsoft in that they are sent from Gmail or Microsoft servers. SPF is a file that sits on your server and if the email is sent from zoho.com and zoho.com IS NOT in the SPF file then the probability of the email being spam increases. Email goes into the spam folder when the spam probability goes over a certain threshold. SPF is a good piece of the puzzle because they would have to hack your server in order to modify your SPF file.
While you need to have the correct domains in the SPF file there are other issues like over 10 domains to lookup or multiple SPF files etc. The tool above should catch most issues.
DKIM
Is another piece of the puzzle. Need to log into Zoho App to ensure it is setup properly. This could be a topic for another blog.
DMARC
Is only needed if you are using Zoho Mail. It helps with email delivery by giving reports on email delivery failure. You can read more at.
https://www.zoho.com/mail/glossary/dmarc.html
Want your SPF Corrected
Fill out the below Zoho SPF Request Form and you will receive a corrected SPF record.
The above form is a Zoho Form. It saves the fields instantly into Zoho CRM. If your website forms are not saving directly into your CRM, or if you need more advanced forms let’s talk. The verify Zoho SPF Setup above was written in PHP, however Zoho Creator is very, very flexible.