Microsoft Office 365 sends all our marketing emails to the Junk folder

Question

Hi there,

When I send emails from a marketing platform like ActiveCampaign, all our emails are sent straight to the junk folder.

ActiveCampaign suggested adding the DKIM keys and SPF record, and even after adding these records and authenticating ActiveCampaign, Outlook says the identity of the sender is not verified.

Our customers on Gmail accounts receive the email in the inbox without any problems, however, with our customers on Microsoft Exchange or Office 365, emails go straight to the junk folder.

I also checked the content for spam score, and it is 9.5/10 which is very good.

Why is Outlook sending emails to Junk? Can anyone help me fix this please?

Answer 1

Hi @Santosh Subramanian

Outlook has a Junk Email Filter that identifies messages that might be spam and moves them to the Junk folder. The Junk Email Filter evaluates each incoming message based on several factors. Junk email is also subject to the settings of the recipient client.

You can add an email address or domain name to your safe senders list. Email addresses and domains on the safe senders list are not considered spam, regardless of the content of the message.

Home>Junk E-mail Options...>Safe Senders>Add.

Hope this helps!

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Answer 2

Hi, I have had this issue and after a few days of digging I solved it. Here's how:

You need to make sure you have SPF, DKIM and DMARC records in your DNS settings. Microsoft only gives you DKIM. To enable this, go to Email authentication settings in Microsoft 365 Defender portal, and select your domain then generate DKIM. Copy those two CNAME records into your DNS, then click activate. Make sure you also activate DKIM for the [domain].onmicrosoft.com - this does not need adding new CNAME records as they are the same, but if you don't activate this it will not work.

Add SPF records for ActiveCampaign (I found them online), but make sure you do not add extra records as you can only have one, and you probably already have one. Consolidate into a single record, and use ChaptGPT to help with that.

DMARC record should have been added when you configured your domain in ActiveCampaign, but check that you only have one - I had two for some reason. Again, ask ChatGPT to consolidate if you have more than one.

Lastly, use a tool like MXToolBox to check each of these three things (select SPF Lookup, or DKIM Lookup, or DMARC Lookup). It will tell you what is the problem, if there is still one.

After I did all this the emails I sent from ActiveCampaign stopped having the "cannot verify identity" issue, which is what makes them go to Junk for the recipients".