General instructions for subscribers
Asking subscribers to add your "from" address to their allowlist has a positive impact on inbox placement. Below are the two main opportunities subscribers have to allowlist:
- During the "sign-up" process. To avoid mail from being classified as spam (which leads to subscribers missing out on messages), ask your subscribers to allowlist your "from" address prior to receiving their first message from you.
- While they are subscribers. Whether the subscribers' preferences have changed, they forgot to add your address during the "sign-up" process, or your "from" address has changed, you may want to consider adding a preheader to your messages to remind subscribers to allowlist. For example, your preheader could read "Please add '[Email Address]' to your Safe Sender list to ensure uninterrupted delivery. See Preheaders to learn more.
Below are some basic instructions you can provide to your subscribers (or private domain administrators) to allowlist your "from" address.
NOTE: We recommend creating your own Landing Page that contains the instructions below so that your subscribers can access them right away. See the Landing Pages & Forms section and its associated articles to learn more.
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allowlisting instructions
Admins
Below are links to instructions for common spam filters.
- Trend Micro - allowlisting information
- Cloudmark - allowlisting information
- Mimecast - configure permitted senders
- Symantec - Support site
- Microsoft Exchange - connection filter policy
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 drop-down 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 drop-down 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.
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Internal and private domain allowlisting
When you encounter deliverability issues at a private domain (or your own domain for that matter), 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, AOL, Yahoo!).
There are usually two ways in which an organization should think about allowlisting:
Allowlisting at your own organization
When you use an outside mail server to send mail on your behalf, you commonly see deliverability issues when receiving mail at your organization. This is because your mail server can identify mail sent outside of its system (using your sending domain) as being "suspicious" and either quarantine or flag as spam.
Contact your IT department prior to sending through Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) to have them allowlist your IPs and possibly our bounce address "informz.net." You can find your IPs by logging into your account and navigating to Admin > System Settings and then scrolling to the bottom of the screen.
If you continue to have issues receiving mail sent from Thrive Marketing Professional internally at your organization, it may be wise to reach out to your IT department to see if there is another filter preventing mail from being delivered (this could be content, sender authentication, too much mail sent at once).
Allowlisting at other private domains
If you find that mail is not being delivered to the recipients' inbox at a private domain, contact the domain owner or the "postmaster" of the domain and request that they allowlist your Thrive Marketing Professional publish IP, informz.net, and/or your "from" address.
Below is sample text for an allowlisting request.
EXAMPLE:
Hello,
I am reaching out to you for guidance in regards to some recent subscriber feedback that we have received. The following subscribers have indicated to us that our emails are not being received (john@ABC.com, amanda@ABC.com). Is it possible for you to add our IP address and sending domain (provided below) to your allowlist? If not, could you provide us with any suggestions in regards to making sure opted-in subscriber emails are being received to their inbox?
IP address: xxx.xx.xx.xxx
Sending domains: informz.net
Thank you for your assistance in resolving this issue!
Conclusion
Keep in mind that allowlisting does NOT guarantee mail will be delivered to the inbox. Allowlisting is done by the mail receiver, and if the sender is not following best practices, the allowlisting in place may be ignored.