Preventing Confirmation Emails from Being Marked as Spam

When customers report that they are not receiving order confirmation emails, the emails may be landing in spam folders. The following explains what Direct Ordering does to prevent this and what a restaurant can do to improve deliverability.

What Direct Ordering Does

• Direct Ordering uses Amazon's SES outbound email service to send order confirmation emails. Amazon SES authenticates all emails sent through the system using SPF checks, DKIM checks, and reverse DNS paths. These three checks help spam filters confirm the emails are coming from where they say they are coming from.
• Order confirmation emails are easy for servers to recognize because they use a consistent IP address, are sent from a single sender, and always use the same "From" address.
• Order confirmation emails are only sent to customers who order online and have therefore opted in to receive them.
• The image-to-text ratio in confirmation emails is kept low (a high ratio makes spam filters suspicious), the emails follow HTML standards, and the content is consistent with the subject line.

What the Restaurant Can Do

• Avoid sending bulk or promotional emails from the same address used for order confirmation emails. For example, if "orders@coffeeshop.com" is used to send order confirmation emails, consider creating a separate address such as "promotions@coffeeshop.com" for promotional emails.
• Consider asking customers to add the sender address (for example, "orders@coffeeshop.com") to their contact list. This wording can be added to the checkout page.
• Consider asking customers whose confirmation emails are sent to spam to click the "Not Spam" button in their email account, which helps them receive order confirmation emails in the future.
• Set the order confirmation email subject to include the restaurant name. For example, "Your Coffee Shop Order is Confirmed." A common spam-prevention recommendation is to brand the "From" field and subject line for better recognition. Instructions for updating the email subject are below.
• Monitor bounce, complaint, and successful delivery statistics for all email addresses. Automatically unsubscribe addresses that bounce multiple emails, as they affect delivery statistics and can contribute to mail being sent to spam.

How to Update the Confirmation Email Subject

1. Log into the Direct Ordering Admin Panel.
2. Go to Settings, and in the Communications section, go to Confirmation Emails.
3. Select the Email Type to update. For example, INITIAL is the confirmation a customer receives when an ASAP order is placed or once a future order is approved.
4. Update the email subject to include the restaurant name.
5. Submit to save the changes.