Email Deliverability

Booking Phoenix sends a lot of email on your behalf — confirmations, reminders, receipts, marketing. Whether they actually reach customers' inboxes depends on a handful of behind-the-scenes settings. This guide explains what those settings are, why they matter, and what to do if your emails are landing in spam.

The short version

For your emails to reliably reach the inbox, three DNS records need to exist on your sending domain:

• SPF — says "Booking Phoenix is allowed to send email as us".
• DKIM — cryptographically signs each email so recipients can verify it really came from you.
• DMARC — tells receiving mail servers what to do if SPF or DKIM fails.

Without these, your emails will be marked as spam or rejected outright by Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and most other major providers.

What's the sending domain?

By default, Booking Phoenix emails come from noreply@bookingphoenix.com. They deliver, but they look like they came from us, not from you.

For a more professional setup, configure a custom sender on your own domain — e.g. noreply@yourvenue.com — and authenticate it with the three records above. Customers see emails from your brand, deliverability is better, and you control the sender reputation.

Setting up the records

Adding DNS records is a one-time job that usually takes 30–60 minutes. You'll need access to your domain's DNS settings (typically through your domain registrar — GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap, etc.).

1. Open a support ticket asking us to enable a custom sender on your tenant.
2. We give you the exact DNS records to add — copy them into your DNS settings.
3. Wait an hour or so for the records to propagate.
4. We verify the records are live and switch your tenant to send from your custom domain.

The detailed implementation steps (SPF, DKIM, DMARC syntax) live in our internal setup notes; we walk you through them when you raise the ticket.

Checking your delivery

Booking Phoenix logs every email it sends. Go to Reports → Email Delivery:

• Sent — we sent the email.
• Delivered — the recipient's mail server accepted it.
• Bounced — the address was invalid or the inbox rejected it.
• Spam-flagged — reported as spam by the recipient (rare but bad — harms your reputation).
• Opened — the recipient opened the email (tracked via a tiny image; under-counts because some clients block it).

Common deliverability problems

"Customer didn't receive the email"

Most common cause: spam folder. Ask them to check there first.

Second most common cause: typo in the email address. Check the booking record — gmial.com or hotmial.com bounces.

If neither applies, check the Email Delivery report. If it shows "delivered" but the customer doesn't have it, it's almost certainly spam-folder placement; if it shows "bounced", the address is invalid.

"Lots of customers report not receiving emails"

This is a deliverability red flag. Likely causes:

• SPF / DKIM / DMARC misconfigured — check with us via support.
• Sending domain is on a spam blocklist — usually because of a previous compromised sender. Check with MXToolbox blacklist check.
• Someone marked previous emails as spam at scale (e.g. an unwelcome marketing send) — reputation damage takes weeks to recover.

"Emails go to Promotions in Gmail"

Less serious — the email arrived, just not in the Primary tab. Causes:

• Multiple images in the email body — Gmail flags these as marketing.
• Unsubscribe links — flagged as marketing by design.
• Sender reputation as a "marketing" sender — can flip back over time if you mostly send transactional content.

Transactional emails (booking confirmations, reminders) usually land in Primary; marketing emails in Promotions. That's normal.

"My logo doesn't show up next to the sender name"

This is the BIMI / Gravatar / favicon stack. Once your domain is fully authenticated (SPF / DKIM / DMARC), and you've set up either BIMI (advanced) or a Gravatar / favicon (simpler), some mail clients show your logo as a sender avatar. Optional polish, not deliverability-critical — ask support if you want help configuring it.

Marketing email-specific tips

Marketing has different deliverability dynamics than transactional — large recipient lists, lower engagement per send, more spam-flagging risk.

• Only send to opted-in recipients. Buying email lists or "guessing" addresses tanks your reputation fast.
• Warm up new sending volume gradually. If you've never sent to 10,000 addresses before, jumping straight to that volume looks like a spam outbreak. Send to smaller batches first and grow over weeks.
• Watch unsubscribe and spam-report rates — high rates teach mail providers to filter you. If a campaign hits >1% spam reports, stop and rethink before sending more.
• Avoid spammy patterns — ALL CAPS subjects, multiple exclamation marks, "FREE!!!", unfamiliar URL shorteners, and image-only emails all increase spam-folder placement.

Monitoring tools we recommend

• mail-tester.com — sends a test email to a one-time address and grades its deliverability out of 10. Aim for 9+/10.
• mxtoolbox.com — checks your DNS records and blacklist status. Useful when troubleshooting.
• Google Postmaster Tools — if you send to lots of Gmail addresses, this dashboard tells you Gmail's view of your reputation. Free.

When to escalate to support

Email deliverability has a lot of moving parts. Open a support ticket if:

• You want to set up a custom sending domain (we'll give you the records).
• Multiple customers report missing emails.
• You suspect your domain is on a blocklist.
• You want to set up BIMI / sender avatars.
• Email Delivery shows unusual bounce or spam-flag rates.

Include screenshots of your Email Delivery report and any error messages in the ticket. The faster we can see the data, the faster we can help.