Limo Anywhere users collectively send out an average of over 200,000 emails each day. Over 99.8% of these are delivered to the end user without issue. However, email issues can arise for certain recipients. Here we will cover the most common situation.
When Limo Anywhere sends email messages on your behalf, it uses the email address you have entered in your company profile as the outbound (From) address. It is highly suggested you do not use a free email address (such as gmail, yahoo, aol, etc.) as your main company email address as there is a considerable amount of delivery issues when emails are sent out through a 3rd party on your behalf. Instead, use an email address associated with the domain name of your website, such as info@mylimowebsite.com – Not only does this give your business a more professional appearance, but you will have more control over the configuration need to ensure email is successfully delivered to your clients.
There are certain security measures emails systems have in place to ensure a 3rd party sending email on your behalf is authorized to do so. The best way to ensure your emails get delivered are by following the 2 steps below:
- Check/update your SPF record
- Authenticate your domain
SPF Records
An SPF record is like a set of instructions for your domain regarding its email service. The SPF record for your domain must include sendgrid.com as an allowed email provider, and must also have an “~all” at the end of the record.
You can check your existing SPF record using a free tool like this one here. Enter your domain in the box and click ‘SPF Record Lookup’ to see what your existing SPF record looks like.
If you do not have an existing SPF record, you can create the following:
v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net ~all
If you have an existing SPF record, check that it includes ‘sendgrid.net’ and has ‘~all’ at the end of the record. If it does not, it will need to be modified. For example, if you had an SPF record which looked like the following:
v=spf1 include:protection.outlook.com -all
It would need to be modified to look like:
v=spf1 include:protection.outlook.com include:sendgrid.net ~all
Authenticating Your Domain
Note: this does not work with free email services!
To set up domain authentication, you must submit a few DNS records (provided by Limo Anywhere) to your DNS or hosting provider (for example, GoDaddy, Hover, CloudFlare, etc.). First, figure out who your hosting provider is and if you have access. If you don’t have access to your DNS or hosting provider, you should figure out who in your company has this access before you begin setting up domain authentication.
To request domain authentication, please contact us at support@limoanywhere.com and provide us with your domain name for authentication (eg: mylimowebsite.com); We will then provide you with several CNAME DNS records which need to be added to your domain as mentioned above. Once added, the domain should be authenticated and Limo Anywhere will have express permission to send email on your behalf which should provide a more successful email delivery rate for your company.
Additional Info
The above steps are for ensuring your emails are able to properly get sent. However, there are situations where the email is sent properly but it does not make it to the recipients inbox. Below are a few common reasons.
Bounced Emails
Bounced or dropped emails can be caused by a few things. Typically, the email address was invalid, or the email address does not exist. We have implemented a notification which should notify you via email the first time an email is bounced. Subsequent attempts to this email address will not generate a notification. When you receive the notification, you should take action to review and revise the email address in Limo Anywhere if necessary.
If you have an issue sending to a specific email address, please contact our Support with the specifics of the email (email address it was sent to, approximate date/time it was sent) and we will check the logs to see if we can determine what happened.
SPAM Emails
An email not delivered because it is flagged as SPAM is most often caused by the intended recipient at one time taking the step of designating an email from the sending company as SPAM, and by the SPAM or Junk Mail Settings in the recipient’s email utility. This may have been done intentionally or in error by the intended recipient, but until that SPAM designation is removed by the recipient any email sent will continue to be rejected as SPAM. Occasionally a recipient may mark a marketing email as SPAM and this causes actual transactional emails from the same company to also be marked as SPAM.