Emails landing in spam

Members are reporting that your organization’s emails are arriving in their spam or junk folder instead of their inbox.

What’s happening

Spam filters look at several signals when deciding where to put an email. The most common causes of spam placement are:

DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) aren’t set up or aren’t verified, so your email goes out from MapleGather’s fallback address rather than your own domain.
Your sending reputation has been affected by a high bounce rate.
Email content includes patterns that spam filters flag.

Go to Email deliverability (at /admin/email/deliverability).
Check the status of all three record cards — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Any card that shows Pending or Failed is a problem — until all three are verified, the page says Email is sending from a functional fallback. To check right away, select Verify all records.
If a card fails verification, check that the Type, Host, and Value in your DNS settings match exactly what’s shown on the card. A single extra character or space will cause verification to fail.
If the dashboard shows DKIM rotation incomplete — verify DNS record, publish the record on the New DKIM key card. See DKIM rotation overdue.

Still on the Deliverability page, check the sender message: Sending from your domain means mail goes out from your From address; Email is sending from a functional fallback (or Email is sending from MapleGather’s address [amended pre-merge 2026-10-20, c21 E panel-r2]) means it goes out from MapleGather’s fallback address until all three records verify.
To use a different address, select Change From address. See Set up your custom From address and verify DNS.

On the Deliverability page, find the Your email address box below the DNS record cards. It appears once at least one record is verified.
Enter your email address and select Send test email. The page shows “Test sent — check your inbox.”
Check whether the test email lands in your inbox. If it still lands in spam, check that all three DNS records are verified.

On the Deliverability page, look for a Bounce rate above 2% alert. The page shows your bounce rate only in that alert, when it’s above 2%; there’s no bounce-rate figure otherwise.
If the alert is there, select Review bounced recipients in it. Work through the bounced-recipient list and correct or remove invalid addresses. A high bounce rate tells spam filters that you’re sending to stale or invalid lists.

Spam filters can flag certain patterns in content — all-caps subject lines, excessive links, or phrases commonly associated with spam.
Check your recent broadcast subjects and bodies for these patterns. Keep subjects clear and specific.

If your DNS records are all verified and your bounce rate is low but emails still land in spam, individual members may need to mark your emails as “Not spam” or add your From address to their contacts. Encouraging members to do this after a welcome email is a common practice.
If the problem is widespread and all three records are verified, the remaining causes are your sending reputation and your content — spam placement is decided by each member’s email provider, and nothing more in MapleGather’s settings changes it. Send test emails to addresses at the providers most of your members use (for example, Gmail and Outlook) to see which one is filtering, and keep reviewing content (step 5) and bounces (step 4).