Email traffic guidance categories

For contextualized recommendations and action items, your outbound email traffic is grouped into 6 categories depending on whether emails were accepted by the recipient, whether DKIM and/or SPF was present and aligned, and whether a confirmed PTR record was found.

Fully verified

Congratulations, this is the ideal scenario for your legitimate email traffic. SPF, DKIM, and PTR are correctly configured for your sources and your emails are DMARC compliant. With that, your email recipients can trust that emails come from you. If one of the verification methods fails in the future, the remaining method acts as a fallback, making sure emails still get delivered.

Caution: Since recipients don't reveal final placement (inbox, spam, or other filtering decisions), emails might show as "accepted" even when they haven't reached the inbox.

Action items:

  • If unexpected/unknown sources appear in this category, investigate.

Improve trust

Emails from these sources were accepted, but receivers could not associate them with a domain name for further validation.

Action items:

  • Set up forward-confirmed reverse DNS for the sending IPs.

Investigate forwarding

Emails from these sources were verified, but likely forwarded by an intermediary, breaking the SPF check. Set up SPF for sources you send directly from, where possible.

Action items:

  • Make sure SPF is setup for all of the sources you control.

Verify sources

Emails from these sources were accepted without passing verification. Set up DKIM signing for legitimate traffic before enforcing DMARC against unverified emails.

Action items:

  • Setup DKIM for failing sources you control.

Investigate filtering

Receivers quarantined emails from these sources. If legitimate traffic is being quarantined, relax DMARC enforcement while you investigate.

Action items:

  • If legitimate traffic is being quarantined, relax DMARC enforcement (p=none) while you investigate.

Investigate rejection

Receivers rejected emails from these sources. If legitimate traffic is being rejected, relax DMARC enforcement while you investigate.

Action items:

  • If legitimate traffic is being rejected, relax DMARC enforcement (p=none or p=quarantine) while you investigate.
  • Monitor and report on potential abuse to network participants.


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