Why are my double opt-in confirmation emails going to spam?

  • 24 November 2020
  • 10 replies
  • 1541 views

Userlevel 3
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Double opt-in confirmation emails may go to spam if your account's default From Address is a free mailbox provider, like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @aol.com, etc. To update your account's default from address, navigate to Account > Contact Information > Organization and update your Default From / Reply-To address. You can set up a forwarding address if you don't already have a business email associated with your domain. For example, if your default From Address is a Gmail address, you can set up an alias to have emails forwarded from your public From Address to your personal inbox.


10 replies

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Our default from/reply-to address is a business email associated with our domain. Why are the opt-in confirmation emails still going to spam? The Welcome email doesn’t, only the first opt-in email.

Badge +1

Same here. Any updates?

Badge +1

Double opt-in confirmation emails may go to spam if your account's default From Address is a free mailbox provider, like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @aol.com, etc. To update your account's default from address, navigate to Account > Contact Information > Organization and update your Default From / Reply-To address. You can set up a forwarding address if you don't already have a business email associated with your domain. For example, if your default From Address is a Gmail address, you can set up an alias to have emails forwarded from your public From Address to your personal inbox.

What if our email is already set up as a business email?

Userlevel 7
Badge +61

Hello @ctang & @guyprivado,

Thank you for your follow-up replies!

Since you are only noticing double opt-in emails going to spam, and they are still going to spam  despite using a business domain for sending , this is an indication that these specific types of emails are failing DMARC. DMARC is a tool owners of domains use to prevent unauthorized senders from using that domain in the from address. When DMARC is in place, the sending domain needs to match the from address domain (which makes the email complaint/authorized). Otherwise emails can be placed into spam or blocked.

To resolve this, you would need to pursue one of the following options:

  • Set DMARC policy to p=none

  • Remove DMARC entirely

  • Turn off double opt-in

Please do let me know if one of the above solutions does not work for you.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Badge +1

Hi @dov.derin, I’m also experiencing this problem. Our first double opt-in email is going to Spam.

Can you expound a bit more on your troubleshooting and resolution recommendations?…

You said “When DMARC is in place, the sending domain needs to match the from address domain (which makes the email complaint/authorized). Otherwise emails can be placed into spam or blocked.”

Question: How do we check if the sending domain matches the From address domain? Is that in Klaviyo? And if they don’t match, can we change something in Klaviyo/admin to get them to match?

It feels like DMARC is a good thing to have in place, so is your first recommendation to try to get the domains to match? And once the domains match, will the email providers like gmail, yahoo, etc. just start accepting the emails as not Spam?

I don’t understand why it would be a challenge to get the domains to match when own the domain, but if it is challenging to accomplish this, either through Klaviyo or elsewhere (domain registration tool/app?), the three alternate solutions you provided (p=none, remove DMARC, disable double opt-in), could you please provide the risks/downsides for each? Again, it seems like DMARC and double opt-in are good things, but your resolution recommendations feel like eroding or removing those good things.

 

Thanks!

Chet

Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hello @chetlv,

You can typically check to see if your sending domain matches your From address domain by navigate to Account > Contact Information > Organization and ensuring that the listed Default sender email address matches that for your domain. For example, if I owned a website whose URL is Examplecases.com, I’ll want to have my default sender from address to something along the lines of sales@examplecases.com; so long as the domain matches. 

DMARC is typically best practice for domain owners to protect their own domains as @dov.derin had mentioned. If you are utilizing DMARC though, you’ll also need to be using a dedicated sending domain with Klaviyo. This is because if you had DMARC enabled, without using a dedicated sending domain within Klaviyo and remained on Klaviyo’s shared sending domain, your DMARC policy will see this misalignment and deem these emails as suspicious. @wei.he elaborates further on in his informative Community Post below:

To learn more about the upsides and downsides of removing your DMARC policy and/or setting your p value to none, I would recommend speaking with your IT administrators as this would directly be related to how your DMARC policy and your domain is setup. In terms of double opt-in, we strongly advise using double opt-in unless you have a specific use case that calls for using single opt-in for your lists. You can learn more about the benefits of using and the risk of not using double opt-in from the Guide to The Double Opt-In Process article which highlights both. 

Have a great day and thanks for being a member of the Klaviyo Community!

David

Badge +1

@david.to  Thanks for all the info! One more question…

With DMARC enabled AND a Dedicated Sending Domain set up on both Shopify and Klaviyo, can the same “from” (default sender email address) be used for emails from both Shopify (transactional) and Klaviyo (marketing)? Or do they need to be different?

Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hey @chetlv,

You’ll still want the from-address for both Shopify and Klaviyo to be using the same domain. Using different domains for your from-address would certainly cause a misalignment and raise suspicions from inbox providers. 

David

Badge +1

Thanks again @david.to for the quick reply and info. To clarify, I mean does the whole email address have to be consistent across various senders (i.e., Klaviyo, Shopify, Google) for the same domain. For example, if we’re using store@thisdomain.com for Klaviyo, must we also use store@thisdomain.com as part of the dedicated sending domain and/or DMARC setup for Shopify and Google?

Another question has arisen since my last question, too - can we set up DMARC for our domain prior to initiating the Dedicated Sending Domain in the Klaviyo admin? Or asked another way, will emails still get sent and delivered (albeit possibly to Spam) in that interim period after adding DMARC to the domain but before hitting the “Verify Records” button in the Klaviyo settings for Dedicated Sending & DNS?

 

Thanks again for all the support on this.

Best,

Chet

Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hey @chetlv,

The whole email address does not need to match. The only requirement is that the domains you are using in both of these services match. For example, for your Shopify transactional emails, you can use the from address of Sales@Example.com and for Klaviyo be using CustomerService@Example.com. 

You can set up and use DMARC on your domain prior to verifying your dedicated sending domain, but you are correct. Without your dedicated domain fully verified, there will be a possibility that your emails would be seen as suspicious and land in spam. By not verifying your dedicated sending domain prior to using DMARC would not prevent you from sending emails within Klaviyo, but just be aware of the risk to your emails not garnering the best performance and deliverability. 

David

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