Emails from our domain (Google) being marked as Spam by some Inboxes?

[supra21]

We started getting reports from about a month ago of parents not receiving emails from the school. We then also got reports of the same from our HR dept trying to contact potential candidates via email not getting responses. In both instances we asked them to check their spam and the email's were there.

Initially we thought the issue was only affecting external Gmail inboxes but some who have Hotmail addresses have also reported the issue as well.

 

We ran a test with my colleagues personal gmail account and it did go straight to spam but prior to a month or so ago this was not the case. If he then marked any email that we sent as part of the tests as "not spam" the mails would then start going straight to inbox as expected. What we cannot figure out is what changed to make certain inboxes start marking emails from our domain as spam? We have tried all manner of variations (with / without subject, titles, signatures). What is odd is this did not affect emails going to my personal gmail or hotmail accounts and does no seem to be wide spread, but enough that is causing issues.

 

I have raised a ticket with Google and after a back and forth suggested we change our eternal facing IP as it maybe blacklisted. However I have checked our external facing IP's and our domain name with MXtoolbox and others all come back with none being blacklisted. They said that it's going to be something the recipient will need to resolve. Which does not help us as if we are emailing someone we have not emailed before and the email happens to be marked as spam we then have to go through calling them and asking them to check their spam, not the ideal scenario.

 

What we do know is a handful of parents who were getting emails from school in the past to their inbox, now goes to spam until they go into their spam folder and mark any emails from over a month ago from our domain as not spam. We have sent out an SMS message to all parents to check their spam to at least make sure it's working for them. However as it stands this issue does still seem to be affecting random external gmail and hotmail inboxes that we may or may not have emailed before. We have not got reports of other services yet, but this could just mean they are not informing me.

 

I have also setup the Google postmaster tools but is currently still blank (it's only been running for over a week, so I assume I will need to wait longer).

 

I can confirm we have SPF, DKIM and DMARC in place (policy currently set to pass, Quarantine/Reject policy not enabled).

 

Does anyone have any ideas?

Edited June 7, 2023 by supra21

[dmj]

I can confirm we have DKIM and DMARC in place (policy currently set to pass, Quarantine/Reject policy not enabled).

 

Did you setup an SPF record as well?

 

Run your domain through this https://dmarcly.com/tools/

[TechMonkey]

Try Mail Tester. You send an email to specific, unique address and it reads the header and lets you know of issues.

It is more for testing newsletters so will moan about lack of content, but you can ignore that.

 

If you can get a hold of the headers from a failing email then you can use MXToolbox to look at the headers and tell you what is being reported for SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

[supra21]

Forgot to add, yes we do have an SPF record in place as well.

[supra21]

Try Mail Tester. You send an email to specific, unique address and it reads the header and lets you know of issues.

It is more for testing newsletters so will moan about lack of content, but you can ignore that.

 

If you can get a hold of the headers from a failing email then you can use MXToolbox to look at the headers and tell you what is being reported for SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

 

Google support did do a header test from an email and said all looked good.

 

However I did run that Mail Tester you linked and it came back with this:

Which is interesting as its the first one that has shown a google mail server on a black list.

[noohad]

Supra21,

 

Did you manage to resolve this as I’m having experiencing exactly the same issue.

 

Any inputs please?

 

Many thanks,

 

Noohad

[supra21]

Hi Noohad,

Nope, this is still an on-going issue after all the investigation I've done the originating mail server IP's are Google's and they are on blacklists. This was the last response from Google Support:

I have taken the initiative to investigate similar issues within our organization. I am currently awaiting responses from our internal team. Once I receive their input, we will be better equipped to address the matter comprehensively.Thank you for your patience and cooperation. I look forward for your response!

As of yesterday they have now requested another phone call for an update which I am currently in the process of scheduling. However based on the fact they have not responded with a solution I expect the phone call is to inform me they are still looking into it....

Have you created a support ticket with Google yet?

Edited July 20, 2023 by supra21

[noohad]

Thank you for the info. I’ve contacted them many times via chat, phone calls and even have a support case open. Their level of support is shocking. They won’t even pass you onto senior support. You’re always stuck with first line agents. Let me know if you have any luck with this and I’ll do the same too. Thanks

[rossibIT]

Who is your MIS with? I have had this issue as well with parents not receiving intouch messages. I have contacted ESS with the email address concerned and they said it was in the unsafe filtered list. It was removed and it worked and the parent started getting messages again.

 

I have had a case where the address was removed and it has NOT worked so I am awaiting the parent to come in so I can have a look at her device. Hoping it is just a user error!

 

Regards

Ross

[noohad]

Using SIMS here. We don’t use intouch. We use parentmail.