Improve the likelihood of hitting your client's inbox and avoiding the dreaded SPAM folder by employing email best practices:
Connect Your E-mail Server for Outgoing E-mails
To send emails from 17hats, you have the option of using the 17hats Mail Server or sending via your email provider’s SMTP server. The 17hats Mail Server is the simplest to set up and provides great deliverability scores right out of the box. Instructions for using the 17hats server can be found here.
Please note: Sending emails via the 17hats Mail Server using a free email address (e.g. one that ends in @gmail.com, @outlook.com, @icloud.com, @yahoo.com, etc. - any email address you don't have to pay a fee for) will result in your emails being much, much more likely to be classified as spam and rejected by the recipient mail server. If you have a free email address, please be sure to connect it in the Outgoing Email section of your Email Settings page in 17hats.
If you prefer to change your outgoing server to use your email provider you will need to connect via SMTP.
To use your e-mail provider’s SMTP, click on Change Outgoing Settings > fill in your Outgoing mail server information > Save. Server settings for common email providers can be found in the Email Help section at the bottom of the Email Settings page.
Ensure Your E-mail Lands in the Inbox
Some email providers have more stringent SPAM rules than others. Make sure your email is seen by following 3 steps to staying out of the SPAM folder.
Test the quality score of your emails
Visit https://www.mail-tester.com, where you will see a test email address, copy that email address and create a test Contact in 17hats using the mail-tester test email address. Be sure to leave the mail-tester window open so you can return in a few minutes to check your score. Now create a Project and send an email to your new test Contact. Give it a few minutes for your email to deliver to mail-tester then return to the mail-tester window and click the link to check your score. Some of the suggestions will require you to contact your email provider for help with settings such as SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
Avoid images when possible
Images trigger spam filters and are a common offender in causing lower delivery rates. Personal emails rarely contain images, so emails with images are a red flag to most filters and will ding your delivery score.
Avoid attachments when possible
17hats aims to help your score by not including questionnaires, quotes, contracts, and invoices as attachments. Adding attachments to emails can often trigger spam filters to block your email from delivery. This is especially true of first emails sent to new contacts, so we recommend being mindful of including attachments.
Food for Thought
Who's your email provider / server?
All email providers are not created equally. Gmail, for example, is much better at delivery than bluehost, aol, or hotmail. It's highly recommend that you update your email provider to one with the highest delivery success rates. We recommend Gmail / Google Accounts. It's easy to create an account and use your own custom domain.