Many nonprofit and small business websites send email. They send automatic emails when someone makes a donation to a charity. They send an email confirmation when a person fills out the contact form. For small businesses that sell things online, they send an email to confirm the order, acknowledge shipping, and communicate promotions and events.
If your website sends automated emails like these, have you noticed any issues lately? If so, you aren’t alone.
We fix these issues regularly, and the problem is an increasing one.
If you’ve heard the terms “DMARC records” or “DKIM” or “email authentication,” it’s OK if you don’t understand the details. There are a few ways that we handle issues with email deliverability. But first, we’ll explain why this is happening so often lately.
Email Delivery Issues from Automated Website Emails
The emails your website sends usually come from your business email address, but they aren’t originating from the same computer server that your own personal emails usually originate from. This makes email programs very suspicious!
It would be like if your cell phone rang, and when you looked at the screen, the incoming call was from yourself! When your website tries to send you an email, your normal email system sees that it’s coming from your business domain (the email ends in your website URL) but your email system knows it’s coming from a different computer server.
Often your email program (usually Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace) simply doesn’t let the email in. You won’t find it in spam or trash. It won’t arrive at all.
This is a big problem if you are a business who fulfills new orders when you receive an email that there is a new order. It’s a big problem if you receive new leads from potential customers from your website’s contact form.
Restoring Email Delivery
At SiteInSight, we have a few tools we can use to get your emails flowing again.
- We can install DMARC and DKIM records at the account where you purchased your domain. This is a great idea for everyone. We can also create an authentication record in the same area that tells your email account that certain pieces of software, like your website, your CRM, or your email newsletter tool, are allowed to send on your behalf. These are great ideas, but they do require some work on your end. We are happy to add those records for you, but each record is specific to your situation, and often need to be generated by the various pieces of software you are using for your business. If you have a IT company providing managed IT services for you, we can enlist their help. If you are doing it on your own, it might be helpful to move to the second option.
- We can install a tool (called a plugin, on WordPress sites) that changes the routing. Instead of having your website send its automated emails using the website hosting server, it connects to your actual email account at Microsoft or Google and sends the emails through your email server. This route also takes a little work from you, but we can get on Zoom and do it together. You’ll log into the administrative account that controls your business email (whichever account you use to create new email addresses for new employees) and then we’ll work with you to create a small app that creates secure credentials to allow your website and your email program to talk to each other. Once it’s set up, your emails will send and receive through your business email server. This solution is pretty brilliant and we have seen it work immediately for clients. We’ll work with you to test the email notifications and make sure they are going through.
- For contact forms, we have an alternate solution. We subscribe to a form builder that is special. Although the form appears on your website and looks like it’s part of your website, it actually lives in a different location and simply displays on your website. The email notifications that let you know someone filled out these forms comes from the form builder itself, not your website. Often this solves the problem of emails not being delivered. These forms also attract a lot less spam.
Email delivery for website notifications is critical for running your organization. Don’t pull out your hair trying to solve this problem. Give us a call or send an email.