How To Whitelist Email Address

Want to know how to whitelist email address? In this short guide, I will explain how to do it. What is email whitelisting and why it is important. 

What is email whitelisting?

Email whitelisting is an action when the recipient takes certain steps and adds additional rules/filters to make sure he/she will get all emails from a particular email address or domain name. 

How to whitelist email address via Gmail app on your phone:

• Find the email and open it
• “Report not spam” (You will see this option only if the email is in the spam folder).
• Click on the three dots on the top right corner to get to the menu and pick “Mark important”.
• On the same menu click on “Move to” and pick “Primary”. 

How to whitelist email using a computer? 

• Open the Gmail app on your favorite browser.
• Click on the button “show search options” which is on the right side of the search bar on the top. 
• In the field “from” enter the exact email address or domain name.
• Create filter.
• Checkmark boxes: “Never send it to spam”, “Always mark it as important” and “categorize as” => “Primary”.

What is the most popular email service for consumers?

Note: as you can see from the stats- Gmail is a clear leader and this article focus on the majority global population (all examples and etc.).

Why is email whitelisting important?

Email whitelisting is important because there are situations when emails for unknown reasons are filtered and land in the spam folder, promotions, or any other. When you actually want, but can’t see them in the main primary folder. 

Why emails are not delivered?

There might be a lot of reasons why this is happening. Check out: Stop emails from going into promotions tab on Gmail. First of all, you have to understand how emails are filtered:

Human factor

Let’s say you were reading an email then navigating on the menu and accidentally clicked “move to spam”. From now on you will not see any future emails from that particular sender. 

Google Magic

Especially Gmail has its own algorithm, Google Magic, which is collecting data tied to your behavior over time. So if you’re not opening/reading emails and just deleting Gmail may decide it is not what you want to see. 

Content matters

If there are many phrases and words, which are considered “blacklisted” such a message may not be delivered in the right spot. Keep in mind Gmail robots may and will read all emails before delivering them to you. This data is also used to protect you and serve Gmail display ads for you. Check Blacklisted words in email marketing.  

Wrong email DNS records

Another reason you may need to whitelist email address is that sender did not set up all email DNS records properly and email authentication partially or fully fails. Gmail, Outlook, and other email service providers fight with unsolicited emails as much as they can to provide you with the best experience.

You might also like: Email Warmup Guide

If you are an email marketer: 

• Ask your new subscribers to add you as a contact in the “address book”. This can be achieved by adding a couple of lines of text on your thank you page or in the first welcome email series.
• When new subscribers get your first email ask them to reply. This is a great start of a friendship or conversation-starting point and at the same time, Gmail will whitelist you as a contact automatically.
• Use Google Postmaster tools to monitor reputation.

Wrapping up

You obviously don’t want to whitelist all emails received. However, it is handy to know how to do it. I hope this short post helped you and if so,- the best thing you can do is to share it with the ones who care about the topic…