Your e-mails land in Gmail spam or Promotions: what Show original tells you and what to fix

E-mail·· 4 views· 4 min read

The short answer: when a customer says your message ended up in Gmail spam, the first thing to do is see what Gmail made of it. In a Gmail account that received the message, open it, click the three dots and choose Show original: the top of the page shows whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC passed. If one failed, the cause is in your domain and it can be fixed. If all three passed, the cause is reputation or content. And if the message is in Promotions, it is not in spam at all: that is just one of Gmail’s tabs. Gmail’s menu names change with the version and with the language of your Google account: if you do not see exactly these words, look for the closest option in the same place.

What Show original tells you

What appears What it means and where to fix it
SPF: FAIL, SOFTFAIL or NEUTRAL The message left from a server your domain’s SPF does not authorise: a website form, a newsletter platform, another provider. Creating your SPF record.
DKIM: FAIL, or missing The message is not signed, or the key published in DNS does not match. It happens a lot when the domain’s DNS is elsewhere and the key was never copied. cPanel shows it under Email Deliverability.
DMARC: FAIL Neither SPF nor DKIM passed for the domain shown in From. Creating your DMARC record.
All three PASS and still spam Reputation or content: a new domain, many messages at once, recipients marking it as spam, shortened links, a single image with little text. See a new domain sending e-mail and writing an e-mail that stays out of spam.
It is in Promotions, not Spam Gmail sorts mail into tabs by how a message looks (offers, buttons, lots of images). The message was delivered; the recipient can drag it to Primary.
Only messages that go through a forwarder fail Forwarding breaks SPF: forwarded e-mail lands in spam.

What to check, in this order

1 Test it on yourself: send an ordinary message from your domain address to a Gmail account of yours, from the same program the customer says fails.
2 Open the original: in Gmail, on the received message, three dots > Show original. Read the SPF, DKIM and DMARC lines at the top. To read the rest of the header, see reading an e-mail header.
3 Fix whatever failed using the table above. In cPanel, the Email Deliverability page says whether the domain’s SPF and DKIM are right and suggests the correct record: the panel that audits your domain.
4 If all three pass, check that the domain and the server are not on a blacklist: domain or IP on a blacklist.
5 Ask the recipient to mark the message as Not spam and to save your address in their contacts. That trains the filter for that mailbox.
6 If you send a lot of mail at once (newsletters, customer notices), read Google’s sender guidelines in the Gmail help and use a proper bulk-sending tool: e-mail marketing without burning your domain. Google also offers Postmaster Tools, which shows domain reputation to senders with enough volume.
Never create a second SPF record to add a new service. A domain can only have one: with two, SPF always fails and everything gets worse. Add the new service to the record you already have.
A Gmail account of your own is the best test tool you have: free, instant, and it shows Google’s own verdict. Test every time you change anything in your e-mail DNS.

All three pass and messages still land in spam? Open a ticket with the full original of one of those messages (the Show original text).

Open a support ticket

SEE ALSO

SPF, DKIM and DMARC: why your e-mail lands in spam

Reading an e-mail header: did SPF, DKIM and DMARC pass?

Email Deliverability: the panel that audits your domain

A new domain sending e-mail: how to build a reputation without landing in spam

Forwarded e-mail lands in spam or bounces: why SPF breaks and what to do

Gmail bounced your message: how to read the refusal and what each kind of reason means

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