# Make sure your emails actually arrive

The most expensive failure in recruitment software is silent: your interview invite went to spam. Authenticate your sending domain and it stops happening.

## Why this matters

By default we send on your behalf from our own domain, which works but shows as “via jugglehire.com” in most clients. Once you authenticate your own domain, mail comes from you — and far more importantly, Gmail and Microsoft stop treating it as suspicious. Unauthenticated bulk mail to consumer inboxes is now routinely rejected outright.

> [!WARNING] Candidates do not check spam
> A rejected or junked interview invite looks identical to a candidate ghosting you. If your response rate dropped without explanation, check this before you change anything else.

## Add SPF, DKIM and DMARC

In Settings → Email → Sending domain, enter the domain you send from. We generate three records to add at your DNS provider.

```DNS | Add all three, then verify
SPF    TXT   @             "v=spf1 include:mail.jugglehire.com ~all"
DKIM   CNAME jh1._domainkey  jh1.dkim.jugglehire.com
DMARC  TXT   _dmarc         "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain.com"
```

| Record | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| SPF | Authorises us to send for your domain. If you already have an SPF record, add our include to it — never publish two SPF records. |
| DKIM | Cryptographically signs each message. This is the record that matters most to Gmail. |
| DMARC | Tells receivers what to do with failures. Start at p=none and read the reports for two weeks before tightening to quarantine. |

## Verify

Return to Settings → Email and choose Verify. Propagation is usually minutes. Once all three pass, send yourself a test to a Gmail address and a Microsoft address — check the message headers show DKIM pass and SPF pass.

## If mail still lands in spam

| Cause | What to do |
| --- | --- |
| New domain, no history | Sending reputation takes days to build. Start with low volume and real conversations rather than a bulk blast. |
| Spammy subject lines | ALL CAPS, excessive punctuation and “ACT NOW” framing get filtered. Write like a person emailing one person. |
| One giant recipient list | Use per-candidate stage emails, not a single mass send. We personalise per recipient automatically. |
| Broken reply-to | Point reply-to at a mailbox someone actually reads. Mail nobody ever replies to degrades your reputation. |

> [!TIP] Check the delivery log
> Every message shows delivered, opened, bounced or complained under the candidate’s Activity tab. A hard bounce is a bad address; a soft bounce is usually a full mailbox and will retry.