Did you know that setting your ecommerce store’s “from:” address to something other than your domain can cause your email receipts to be marked as spam or never arrive?  That’s right, using your GMail address, yahoo address, etc… as the default address for your store can wreak havoc on your emails being delivered when customers place purchases…

Why this is a problem

When you set your store’s email address to another address like your GMail or AOL one, this raises all kinds of red flags when your email receipts go out (or a forgot password email for customer registration). Normally, emails that get sent from GMail, AOL, or any other major email provider are “coded” with a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record.

SPF tells other mail servers where an email should come from when it is sent. By setting your store’s email address to another domain, the SPF check now fails, as a GMail address should never originate from your ecommerce hosting account. This will cause email servers to often reject or mark as spam your receipt emails, as to them, it looks like a spam or forged email address.

What Should You Do Instead?

If you love using your GMail account for email, all is not lost. The easiest thing to do is set up a forward for an address at your domain (like sales@your_domain.com) that forwards all emails received to your GMail address. This way, the “from:” field on email receipts, gift certificates, forgot password emails, etc… is an address at your domain. This won’t trip any filters for people receiving these emails, and if they reply, it goes right to your preferred email service like GMail.

Two other benefits from doing this:

• 1. Your emails look more professional when they arrive coming from an address at your domain.

• 2. Customers can more easily recognize that the email is coming from your site as opposed to a random Yahoo or AOL address.

If you’re using ShopSite for your ecommerce store, you can set the “from: address under:
Commerce Setup -> Order System -> Email

Email Settings (click to enlarge)

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So make this simple change in your store if you’re using an email address not at your domain for email receipts. You’ll instantly boost deliverability, and send a more professional looking email to your customers.

 photo credit