A buyer in Jaipur finds a flat on your website, fills in the enquiry form and waits. The website sends you an email alert. You never see it, because it went straight to your spam folder. By the time you notice, days later, the buyer has booked a visit with someone else.
The worst part is that nobody finds out. Usually the email does not bounce back with an error. It just sits quietly in a folder you never open.
Why it happens
When someone fills in your form, your website does not send the email from your phone or laptop. It hands the message to an email sending service, which delivers it on the website's behalf. The email says it is from some address: perhaps enquiries@yourfirm.in or, quite often, your own Gmail address.
Now look at it from the inbox provider's side, whether that is Gmail, Outlook or anyone else. An email has arrived claiming to come from your domain, but it was sent by a server your domain has never said anything about. That is exactly what a forged email looks like. Fraudsters send mail pretending to be real businesses all the time. So the inbox provider does the sensible thing: it treats the unverified message with suspicion, and often files it in spam.
Nothing is wrong with the enquiry itself. The problem is that nobody has told the world this sending service is allowed to send for your domain.
SPF, in plain words
The fix involves two settings with unhelpful names. The first is SPF, which stands for Sender Policy Framework.
Every domain has a set of public settings called DNS records. Think of them as the domain's entry in a directory that any computer can look up. SPF is a line in those settings that lists which services are allowed to send email for your domain. It works like the list of authorised signatories a bank keeps for your account.
When an email arrives from a server claiming to send for your domain, the receiving provider looks up that list. If the server is on it, the check passes. If it is not, the email looks more suspicious.
DKIM, in plain words
The second is DKIM, which stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail. It is a digital signature.
The sending service stamps every email with a signature that only it can create. Your domain's DNS records publish a matching key that anyone can use to check that signature. When the email arrives, the receiving provider checks the stamp against the key. If they match, it knows two things: the email was sent by someone your domain authorised, and nobody altered it on the way.
Think of it as a wax seal on an envelope. SPF says who may carry your letters. DKIM proves that this particular letter was sealed by someone you trust.
There is a third record, DMARC, which tells receiving providers what to do when those checks fail. It is worth setting up as well, but SPF and DKIM are what fix the problem most offices have.
How to fix it
The fix is to authorise your own domain with whatever service sends your website's email. In practice:
- Send alerts from an address on your own domain, like enquiries@yourfirm.in, not a Gmail address.
- Get the exact SPF and DKIM records from your website provider or its sending service.
- Add them to your domain's DNS settings, usually at the company where you bought the domain.
- Wait for the service to show the domain as verified. This can take anywhere from minutes to a couple of days.
- If your domain already has an SPF line for your office email, do not add a second one on the same name. Two SPF lines on one name make the check fail, so they must be merged.
If a provider has ever asked you to add a few odd-looking records to your domain, this is almost certainly why. It is worth doing even if your alerts seem to arrive today, because the big inbox providers have become stricter about this over the years.
To check it worked, submit your own enquiry form, open the alert in Gmail, and choose "Show original" from the menu. You should see SPF and DKIM listed as PASS.
What it does not fix
Authorising your domain removes the most common reason enquiry alerts get filtered. It is not a guarantee. An email stuffed with links, or a subject line in capitals, can still look like spam, and every inbox provider makes its own judgement.
So do not rely on email alone. Open your website's enquiry list every day, and get alerts on WhatsApp too if your system offers it; we cover keeping those organised in using WhatsApp for enquiries without losing track. Then reply fast, for the reasons in the five-minute rule for property enquiries.
This week, fill in your own website's enquiry form from your phone, and see where the alert lands. If it is in spam, you have found your fix. And if you do not yet have your own domain to send from, start with choosing a domain name.
