Whitelisting emails and domain reputation

What is Whitelisting and why is it important?

Whitelisting is when you add an email address to an approved sender list, so emails from that sender are never moved to the spam folder. Instead, when a recipient whitelists an email address, they are confirming that they know and trust the sender.

This massively improves the delivery, deliverability of your emails into the inbox vs the junk/spam or promotions folder as well as significantly improving your domain reputation with the email delivery servers such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft .....

What should I do about it?

At every opporutnity, 

1. Landing pages

2. Thank you pages

3. On the phone

4. On Zooms

5. whenever possible

ask your contacts specifically to whitelist your emails.

How to Whitelist

1. Feel free to copy and paste the below and add to your Thank you pages etc.  with clear instructions to your contacts.

Gmail - Whitelist instructions

1. Log in to your Gmail account.

2. Click on the Settings cog in the top-right corner and go to “Mail settings”.

3. Select the “Filters” tab.

4. Click on “Create a new filter”.

5. In the “From” field, add the e-mail addresses or names of people or companies you never want to land in your spam folder, wring the word “OR” in capitals between each address/name.

6. Click on “Next Step” when you have finished entering the information.

7. Check the box next to “Never send it to spam” and then click “Create Filter”.

Whitelists can include:

• A specific e-mail address, like “name@thebusinescatalyst.com".

• An entire domain name like “@thebusinesscatalyst.co.uk”.

• A contact's name, like “Lisa Catto”.

• A nickname used by your contact, like “BizCat”.

Apple Mail - Whitelist instructions

Apple Mail doesn’t have the option to whitelist like some other email providers do. Instead, all you can do is mark something as “Not Junk” and it will be sent to your inbox. Here’s how:

1. Open your Mail app and go to the Mailboxes screen.

2. Select the Junk folder.

3. Find the email you want to whitelist and swipe left to see options.

4. Tap the More button.

5. Tap the Mark button.

6. Tap the Mark as Not Junk button.

Outlook - Whitelist instructions

1. Sign into your Outlook.com account from a computer

2. Select the Settings icon (gear icon) at the top-right corner

3. Select “View” all Outlook settings

4. Select “Mail”

5. Select “Junk email”

6. Under the “Safe senders” and “Domains Header,” select “Add”.

7. Enter the “Sender Email Address” then press the “Enter” key on your keyboard

8. Select the “Save” that appears in the bottom-right corner

Messages sent from that safe email address will now end up in your inbox.

Outlook Mobile - Whitelist instructions

On Outlook mobile, you can add senders to your focused inbox to ensure delivery of their emails. Here’s how:

1. Open the email you want to whitelist.

2. Tap the three dots in the top right of the screen (not the dots inside the email).

3. Tap Move to Focused Inbox.

4. In the popup box, tap the radius button for “Move this and all future messages” then tap MOVE TO FOLDER.

Yahoo - Whitelist instructions

1. Tap the hamburger menu (three stacked lines) in the top left.

2. Tap Settings and scroll down to Filters.

3. Select the email account you want to add a filter for.

4. Tap the + icon to add a new filter.

5. Name it anything you want (such as “Whitelist”), then either:

   • Add the exact email you want to whitelist OR;

   • Add the @domain.com you want to whitelist to get deliveries from every email at that domain.

6. Click the ✓ icon in the top right to save the filter.

This is also a useful article from Keap

Want to know more about inbox delivery? Click to download 'The Science of Getting in the Inbox"