Learn How to Prevent Your Emails from Being Marked As Spam and Achieve High Email Deliverability Rates

Email deliverability is more challenging today than it was two years ago. Security of the systems used to monitor and route emails has increased. And gone are the days when you could create an email server and start 'blasting' with little concern. I think most of you can understand why the need for better email security has come about. Regardless, unauthenticated emails, whether they originate from your company domain or are being sent from another application on your behalf, will get marked as Spam/Junk. Consequently, emails sent to contacts from Salesforce will, with a high probability, not get delivered to the intended recipients' inboxes.

In simple terms, when the email is being sent from a domain other than yours and lists your email address as the sending domain, a modification occurs. This modification results in the systems requiring proof that the domain sending emails on your domain's behalf is not pretending to be you. This process is technical. Though, as Awesome Admins, having a baseline understanding of how improving email deliverability in Salesforce will earn you the Golden Buzzer. Most companies using Salesforce® CRM send emails to new Prospects, Leads, and Contacts, and let us not forget those marketing emails for revenue generation. If I were to run a test on 50 randomly chosen domains of companies subscribing to Salesforce® CRM, at least 35 would show issues with email deliverability.

Most companies aren't aware of the pending issues. And in most cases, they point to external systems when they realize their email deliverability and open rates are low. So, how do we remediate this issue? First, assess your domain's email deliverability. This activity will be outside the area of responsibilities for 99% of Salesforce Admins. Though, being the Awesome Admin you are, you can help your email administrator be successful. The plus is you both get that 'golden buzzer' for helping to increase deliverability and protect the company's sender reputation.

The assessment by your company's email administrator will help uncover the issues that require remediation. You could shrug your shoulder, provide your email and website server administrators with the details necessary to improve email deliverability from Salesforce, and mark it done. The risk in taking this approach is this; As soon as the pending issues become more prevalent for other applications within the technology stack, fingers will point at you. So, accept the first step as obligatory. After they remediate the pending issues, the second step for you, the Awesome Admin is to present the configuration that you them to add to your Domain Name Server (DNS) records.

The configuration will comprise one Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and two DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) entries. Other applications may require specifically related settings. The third part to email authentication is Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC), which uses SPF and DKIM to establish a higher email security level. This also provides deliverability reports. There is a fourth. Though, it is outside the context of this post. These email authentication policies are hands down, deep and technical. 

Salesforce provides most of what you need to enable successful email deliverability from the platform. Each item in the list below provides a link to the relevant documentation for implementing the improvements; This is the third step. The fourth step is... Testing. Testing can be as simple as sending a few emails from the CRM to a personal email address or to a friend at a different company, then confirming deliverability. There are other tools that your email administrator can use to validate deliverability. The fifth step will be the responsibility of your email administrator. And that is monitoring the health of the email server after the updates are complete.

If you decide to ignore optimization of your domain for email deliverability, the result will be twofold. The first is obvious, poor email deliverability. The second, which will creep up on you like a tiger hunting in the dark, is that your company's domain will face restrictions in sending emails, and your domain's "sender reputation" will significantly decrease. Remediating the latter is a nightmare; There is no better way to describe it. 

In the upcoming Summer '23 release, Salesforce will enforce email setup and usage changes in the platform. More details on that are here. Act now to get a head start. Begin preparing your domain for high email deliverability and sender reputation by implementing the improvements outlined in the documents below, where applicable.

1. Sales and Service Cloud; See this helpful article for generating DKIM keys in Salesforce, and this article for best practices.
2. Account Engagement Email Sender Reputation and Deliverability
3. Marketing Cloud Email: See this article.

Other Relevant Resources:

1. Pardot/Account Engagement Email Deliverability Best Practices
2. Email Deliverability Essentials (Trailhead Module)
3. Email Deliverability Concepts (Trailhead Module)
4. Salesforce IP Addresses and Domains to Allow (This may not be applicable to your environment. Though, consult with your IT Security team to confirm.)
5. Einstein Activity Capture Security Guide
6. Maintaining Email Security [Important guidance on Deliverability settings in Salesforce]
7. SPF and DKIM Alignment Fails [When the failure is associated with *.bnc.salesforce.com]

In closing, I recommend you collaborate with the relevant team/individuals in your organization to complete these steps. If you get the "Why do we need this now?" question, I recommend you present the related release notes and layer that with the fact that the implementation is an overall win for the business. 

Message me using this direct Trailhead link ~> here, if you need help.

#Salesforce Admin #Email Deliverability Issues