Hi,
I recently updated my newsletter’s sender email address from noreply@customdomain.com to my personal email address. I did it under Settings > Email newsletter > Customize > Email addresses > Sender email address
It’s working, in the sense that when I send out a newsletter, the FROM field shows my personal email address, and people can reply to it.
However, I’ve noticed that the emails are now going to the spam folder, even after marking them as ‘not spam’. Also, my newsletter open rate suddenly dropped after making this change. It went from 80% to 10%.
My questions:
-
Is it a bad idea to use a personal email address for the newsletter? Should I revert back to ‘noreply’ one? I wanted to have a personal email address so my readers could reply me directly, also it looks a bit less formal.
- Is there anything else I need to do so that my newsletter doesn’t end up going into the Spam directory?
Any help is really appreciated.
Regards,
Akshay
P.S. Not sure if it matters, but I’m on a Ghost PRO plan, using the Digest theme. You can find my website here.
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I was wondering the same thing actually, so just commenting to see what comes up in the thread
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@software_writer It appears your personal email address is at @hey.com.
Receiving servers will decide whether your email is spam based in part on the SPF record for the sending domain. This record is stored in the DNS records for the domain, as a record of type “TXT”. So here I can look up the SPF record for hey.com like this:
dig TXT hey.com
Doing so returns this result:
"v=spf1 include:_spf.hey.com ~all"
The meaning this record is documented here: SPF: SPF Record Syntax
That tells us that ~all means “Soft fail” for all IP addresses that aren’t explicitly allowed to send mail on behalf of hey.com. Since hey.com hasn’t explicitly allowed the Ghost Pro servers to send mail for the domain, the message looked forged according to SPF, and because it looks forged, receiving servers put in the spam folder.
There are a couple ways to resolve this:
- Since you own and control the DNS and email for your own domain name, you can set up an email at your own domain, and then update your DNS records for the domain to add an SPF record that explicitly allows Mailgun to send mail on behalf of your domain. You can search for Mailgun SPF setup to see how to do that.
- I’m not a Ghost Pro member, but generally it’s also possible to send mail /from/ one email address by have a Reply-To that replies back to a different address. If Ghost Pro supports that, you could send from some email that’s working, but people would still reply to your personal email address.
Hi Mark,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this detailed writeup, including both the problem and the solutions. I really appreciate it!!
I will contact Ghost support to see how I can implement solution 2. Will keep you posted.
Thank you!!
Regards,
Akshay
I am currently struggling with the exact same issue. It seems that if you do not self host Ghost but are a Ghost(Pro) user and set a custom email address for newsletter or transactional emails together with a custom domain instead of the Ghost.io domain (which to me seems kind of a standard thing to do because it looks way more professional), then the included spf/dkim settings with Mailgun (which is included with Ghost(Pro) and pre configured) do not verify your emails anymore.
So if I understood everything correctly (as an amateur), this would require to set up new spf and dkim DNS settings with your provider (in my case Cloudflare through which I channel my Google hosted domain and emails).
I set up spf, dkim and dmarc for Google through Cloudflare DNS settings and everything works like a charm and all checks are passed IF I send mails directly from the Google webmailer or my local email client. But any email sent through the Ghost interface fails spf and dkim checks and also ends up in my spam folders.
Any ideas appreciated. :)
It sounds like you don’t quite have your domain’s mail settings right yet. Your SPF needs to say that Mailgun is allowed to deliver mail on behalf of your domain. When you set up your SPF, did you include mailgun.org? See How to Set Up SPF and DKIM for Mailgun - DMARCLY . If you only set it up to allow mail coming from Google to be delivered under your domain name, well, that’s why emails coming from Mailgun in your domain name aren’t working. :)
This page has some example SPFs for Mailgun: How to Set Up SPF and DKIM for Mailgun - DMARCLY
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Hi Cathy, yes, exactly. The thing is, with Ghost(Pro) there is no Mailgun set up, no account I can log into. As far as I know. It is all included and managed by Ghost. I don’t have an account there, thus can’t make any changes internally. For dkim for instance I would need an individual domainkey value from the Mailgun side to add to my DNS records.
And like I said, I set everything up from the Google side and it works smoothly.
So the main question is basically “If I change newsletter and transactional email addresses as a Ghost(Pro) user in the interface and the Ghost pre-handled spf/dkim records don’t authenticate anymore, where do I get the information for the Mailgun dkim record to populate my DNS in Cloudflare?”
Also, spf I set up properly including mailgun. If I run an email check with MX toolbox (Email Deliverability Tool - Check Your Deliverability Report - MxToolBox), for a Google email it shows my spf, for the Ghost/mailgun email it shows an spf I have not set up:
Mail sent from Ghost:
Mail sent from Google client:
Same result with ~all and -all
And now I’m also wondering, should bulk/newsletter emails be sent over a custom/personal/gmail address anyways in terms of capacity and load. But Ghost(Pro) offers this as an official feature to use.
Nothing you change configuration-wise will change the fact that Mailgun is sending your messages for you. You’re only changing the from address shown, not who is handling delivery.
I don’t see an obvious way to adjust DKIM without input from Mailgun, if you’re on Ghost Pro. I suggest reaching out to their support address.
Yes, exactly that’s what I suspect to be the issue. Mailgun keeps sending the emails but the address and its domain has changed.
I’ll reach out to the support.
Thanks for your responding.
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I have the same problem, did they gave you a solution already? :)
Apparently the various tools from the internet don’t provide accurate results, showing verification errors and the like. It seems like spf and dkim is handled properly in the background by Ghost although I can’t verify it. I set up new Gmail and web.de email addresses and sent test emails and all went to the inboxes. Without subscribing, whitelisting or adding to contacts. Emails going to Spam is supposedly a (temporary?) Apple Mail thing.
If I remember, the problem was with my email provider. After switching to Gmail, it started working fine.
