Prevent your emails from landing in spam
Best practices to achieve higher email deliverability.
In an increasingly digital landscape, ensuring that your emails reach their intended recipients' inboxes is crucial for effective communication. However, with stringent spam filters and evolving email protocols, the risk of emails being diverted to spam folders is ever-present.
Let’s explore actionable strategies and best practices to prevent your emails from landing in spam, ultimately maximizing your outreach and engagement efforts.
1. Make sure your recipient list is valid
Sending emails without knowing your recipients can lead to spam issues. Ensure that you send emails to recipients only who have opted in. We advise against buying email databases as they may contain unfiltered and low-quality contacts, including fake emails.
2. Remove inactive email addresses
High bounce rates can negatively impact the sender's reputation. Internet service providers (ISPs) and email providers view frequent bounces as a sign of poor list hygiene and may flag the sender as spam.
3. Maintain high-quality email content
Emails that are misleading, or of poor quality are more likely to trigger spam filters and end up in recipients' spam folders. You can get started by having a genuine email subject and relevant email body. This will ensure that your emails provide value to the recipients.
4. Ensure your email has an unsubscribe option
Recipients should always have the provision to opt out of your emails. It helps maintain compliance with the most common anti-spam that are strictly followed in various countries. Plus, it’s about respecting the recipient’s preferences and privacy.
5. Add your physical address or company’s headquarters
Providing clear and accurate information about your location, such as your physical address or company headquarters, demonstrates transparency and authenticity. This will reassure recipients that your email is legitimate and not a spam or phishing attempt.
6. Use a Genuine and Reliable Sender Address
A trustworthy email address is a necessity for better email deliverability. SurveySparrow assists businesses with default email domains for sending surveys, getting response notifications, and internal communications. In this pursuit, a dedicated domain is allocated for each customer.
To fully leverage the default domain and prevent emails from landing in your customers' or employees' spam folders, we kindly request you allowlist the designated domain.
Allowlist your free default email domain
Following are the sub-domains and the corresponding usage for your free default email domain,
mailer.yourFreeDefaultDomain - Emails related to Classic & Chat surveys
cx.yourFreeDefaultDomain - Emails related to CX surveys
ex.yourFreeDefaultDomain - Emails related to 360 Assessments
tickets.yourFreeDefaultDomain - Emails related to Ticket Management
You can find your free default domain under Settings>Email Settings>Default>Free email.
By using SurveySparrow's free default domain, you agree to abide by the Acceptable Usage Policy and adhere to the standard practices to be followed.
Setting up your Reply-to email address is as important as your From address. When recipients see a legitimate reply-to address, they are more likely to interact with the email, increasing the chances of it reaching their inbox instead of being marked as spam.
We recommend setting up a custom email address to strengthen your email delivery further. You can set up your custom email address in 3 ways:
Ensure that you follow these basic guidelines to achieve better email deliverability. It’s all about being authentic and considerate.
NOTE : If workflow/automation confirmation emails are not being received even after multiple test submissions, verify that your custom email domain DNS authentication records (SPF/DKIM) are present and correctly configured. Missing or modified SPF/DKIM records can cause email rejections (for example, Gmail rejecting emails). After correcting the DNS records, re-verify the custom email configuration in SurveySparrow.
Prohibited content in Email Share
SurveySparrow prohibits sending any content that is:
- Illegal
- Harmful or misleading
- Sexually explicit
- Promotes illegal activities or spreads misinformation (e.g., phishing emails, chain letters, pyramid schemes)
- Hate speech, threats, or harassment
- Advertises for unapproved medical claims or prescription medication
- Designed to deceive or cause harm (e.g., malware or viruses)
- If it doesn’t comply with the laws in certain countries
This content is not allowed, regardless of user consent or if the content is permissible by law.
Examples of prohibited content include but are not limited to, the ones listed below.
- Pornography or sexually explicit content;
- Escort services, mail-order bride or spouse finders, international marriage brokers, and other similar services;
- Statements about products claiming to prevent, treat, or cure health issues (e.g., illness or disease) that have not been approved by the applicable government authority or are not permitted under applicable law or regulation;
- Advertising for prescription medication that cannot legally be sold over-the-counter; and
- Content that is fraudulent or that SurveySparrow determines in good faith is intended to mislead a recipient (e.g., phishing emails, chain letters, pyramid schemes) or else harm or damage (e.g. malware or viruses).
Under these circumstances, SurveySparrow reserves the right to block your survey from being sent via email.
Do reach out to our support team for further details.
Troubleshooting: “Survey Blocked due to Phishing or Abusive” (Email Share)
If your survey is blocked with a “Phishing or Abusive” warning, it means our security checks detected patterns commonly associated with phishing, abuse, or unsafe data collection. This can happen even for legitimate academic or internal surveys.
1) Identify what content is triggering the block
Review and temporarily remove/edit content in this order (test after each change):
- Survey title
- Welcome page / intro message
- Every question (especially open-ended prompts)
- Thank You page / closing message
- Email invite subject line and email body (if using Email Share)
Tip: Copy the survey content into a document and search for terms that look like credential requests, urgency, or verification language.
2) Common triggers to check for
Even if your intent is research, these items frequently trigger security blocks:
- Requests for sensitive personal data (e.g., passwords, OTPs, bank details, national IDs, medical file numbers)
- Requests for phone numbers/emails when not clearly justified
- “Verify/confirm your account”, “login”, “click here”, “urgent”, “act now”, “limited time” style wording
- Links/URLs (especially shortened links) or instructions to download files
- Impersonation language (e.g., claiming to be a bank, government, or another organization)
3) Remediation best practices (especially for academic surveys)
- Collect only the minimum data needed; avoid collecting identifiers unless essential.
- If you must collect contact details, explain why (e.g., “optional email for follow-up interview scheduling”).