When you encounter deliverability issues at a private domain (or your own domain), you may need to have your sending IP and/or sending domain added to an allowlist. Private email domains tend to have more aggressive filters in place compared to other large email providers (such as Gmail and AOL).
Let's look at the two ways in which an organization should think about allowlisting.
NOTE: Keep in mind that allowlisting does not guarantee email will be delivered to the inbox. Allowlisting is done by the email receiver and if the sender is not following best practices, the allowlisting may be ignored.
Allowlisting at your own organization
When you use an outside email server to send email on your behalf, you commonly see deliverability issues when receiving email at your organization. This is because your email server can identify email sent outside of its system (using your sending domain) as being "suspicious" and either quarantine or flag as spam. In order to prevent this from happening, reach out to your IT department prior to sending through Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Enterprise (Thrive Marketing Enterprise) to have them allowlist your IPs.
To find the allowlisting information for your emails, log in to your Thrive Marketing Enterprise account, select the Tools tab, and scroll to the bottom of the page. Provide your Return Path address and your assigned IP addresses.
Allowlisting at other private domains
If you find that email is not being delivered to the contacts' inboxes at a private domain, you may want to reach out to the domain owner or postmaster to request to allowlist your publish IP and your "from" address.
Allowlisting instructions
Admins
Below are links to instructions for common spam filters.
- Trend Micro - allowlisting information
- Mimecast - configure permitted senders
- Microsoft Exchange - create safe sender lists (applicable to Exchange Online Protection; Microsoft Defender for Office 365 plan 1 and plan 2; Microsoft 365 Defender)
Users
Below are instructions for common email clients.
Outlook
- Right-click a message in the preview pane (double-check the Junk and Clutter folders for messages too).
- Click the dropdown list and select Junk.
- Select Never Block Sender's Domain.
NOTE: If the message was found in the Junk or Clutter folder, you can move it to the inbox.
Gmail
- Click the Gmail dropdown list (on the left side of the screen) and select Contacts.
- Add the "from" address to your contact list.
If the message was found in the spam folder, right click it and select Not Spam. Additionally, you can move messages to their proper classification folder, if needed.
AOL
Right click a message and select Add to Contacts. Alternatively, select Contacts on the left sidebar and add the sender's "from" address. If the message was found in the spam folder, right-click it and select Not Spam.
Yahoo
- Click the Contacts icon (in the upper left corner) and select New Contact.
- Add the sender's email address.
If the message was found in the spam folder, right click it and select Not Spam. if you see the address in the block list, select the address you wish to remove and click Remove.
Other Email Clients
Add the sender's "from" address to your contact list/address book. If the message was found in the spam folder, move it to the inbox or right click it and select Not Spam.