Websites / Improved Email Deliverability
Making sure your emails don't end up in junk
So, your website is all set up to start generating leads, only for you to discover days later that your form submissions are ending up in your junk/spam folder or even worse, you haven’t received them at all. Missing out on a lead opportunity because your email went to spam can be frustrating.
As the battle against spam continues to rage on, email providers are cracking down with rigorous spam filtering but in the crossfire, legitimate emails end up in the spam folder too.
The best solution? Sending emails over SMTP. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or SMTP for short is a standard protocol for sending and receiving emails. In less nerdy terms, it’s like what the post office defines what information must appear on an envelope so that it arrives in your mailbox efficiently.
Sending Emails via SMTP
Most website forms on default use the PHP mail function, which sends emails directly from the web server. Since the reputation of the web server is a key factor in determining spam, most websites run on shared hosting meaning that your website shares the reputation with every other website on that server. If anyone of those sites gets identified as a spammer, the whole server could get blacklisted. SMTP, on the other hand, sends the email from the mail server, which is specialised in handling and delivering emails, helping improve the deliverability of emails reaching the inbox. We recommend using third-party SMTP providers such as MailGun or SendGrid as they are highly reputable and reliable providers. They also offer up to 12,000 emails per month for free, which is adequate for most small to medium-sized businesses.
Along with improving your email deliverability, MailGun and SendGrid provide detailed statistics on the emails that it processes, and if they are delivered or opened.
Interested in convincing spam filters your web form submissions are not emails from Nigerian princes looking to share their riches in exchange for bank details, but just simple customer enquiries about your products and services?