Here’s why you should whitelist our emails
With the rise of spam, email providers like Yahoo and Gmail have put in place stricter rules for what they allow their users to receive. This can have the side effect of harming delivery of legitimate emails because of “similarities” in wording.
For example: there are a lot of spammers sending emails related to “weight loss” and “pills in Mexico” which can sometimes cause our emails to get blocked because of “weight loss surgery in Mexico”.
This article will go over what you can do to ensure you receive important emails from us in Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and macOS Mail.
Gmail
If you use Gmail, there are three things you can do to add an email address to the whitelist. They are:
Add a New Entry in Your Contacts
Gmail’s spam filters use a complex scoring method to flag messages as spam. And having an address listed as a known contact in your account makes it less likely an email from that address will get flagged. So the first thing you should do is add the address in question as a contact in your contact list.
Follow these steps to add a new contact:
1. Click the apps icon in the upper right corner of the Gmail page, next to your profile image
2. From the menu that pops up, click the contacts app
3. In the contacts app, click create contact, located in the upper-left portion of the page
4. Add the person’s name and email address to the new contact and click save
Mark Desirable Messages as Not Spam
If emails from people you know are ending up in your spam folder, you can tell Gmail that they’re not spam. The feedback will help the system learn from its mistake and make it less likely that similar emails get flagged in the future. To do that, you can:
1. Click on the Spam folder in the left-hand email folder pane
2. Type the email address in question into the search bar to bring up a list of all messages from that person incorrectly marked as spam
3. Select all of the emails in the resulting list
4. Click the More button and then click Not Spam
Create a Filter For the Email Address
The last thing you can do to prevent Gmail from blocking messages from a specific sender is to create a filter for the address in question. Doing so gives you the option to let Gmail know never to send messages from a given address to the spam folder. You can do this by:
1. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the Gmail page
2. Click Settings
3. Click Filters, and then click Create New Filter
4. Enter the email address in question to the From field
5. Click Create filter from this search
6. Look for the box labeled When a message arrives that matches this search and choose Never send it to spam
7. Click Create filter
Outlook.com
If you use an email address from Hotmail, Windows Live Mail, or MSN mail, then your email relies on Outlook.com to operate. So you’ll have to go there to make the changes necessary to whitelist an email address. There are two things you’ll have to do. Here’s what they are.
Add a New Entry in Your Contacts
Just like Gmail, Outlook.com uses a scoring system to help identify spam messages. And if a message comes in from one of your contacts, it’s less likely to end up in your spam folder. To add a new contact in Outlook.com, you should:
1. Select New contact from the toolbar in the upper left-hand corner of the page
2. Enter the email address and name of the contact, along with any other information you’d like to include
3. Select Create
Add an Entry in Your Safe Senders List
Outlook.com includes a safe senders list specifically so you can let it know which emails to consider safe by default. So adding an address to the list is an excellent way to make sure the messages you want get through and don’t end up in your spam folder. To add an entry to your safe senders list, you should:
1. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the Outlook.com page
2. Click View all Outlook settings
3. Select Mail from the left-hand menu pane
4. Select Junk email from the resulting menu
5. Look for the heading Safe senders and domains, and click the Add button beneath it
6. Enter the email address in question and press the enter key on your keyboard
7. Click Save in the lower right corner
Yahoo
Yahoo Mail doesn’t have any address-specific spam controls that users can alter. But there are two ways you can improve the odds that messages from specific addresses will reach your inbox. Here’s what they are.
Add a New Entry in Your Contacts
Adding an email address into your Yahoo Mail contact list will help to make sure messages from that address make it to your inbox. To add a new contact, you should:
1. Click the Contacts icon in the upper right portion of your Yahoo Mail page
2. Click Add new contact at the bottom of the resulting pane
3. Add the contact’s name, email address, and any other information you wish to include
4. Click Save
Create a Filter For the Email Address
Like Gmail, Yahoo mail also lets you create filters that control how and where emails get delivered upon arrival. So you can redirect messages from safe senders into your inbox by creating one. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Click the gear icon and then click More Settings
2. Click Filters
3. Click Add new filters
4. Enter a memorable name for your filter
5. Enter the email address in question to the Sender field
6. Choose Inbox as the folder to deliver the messages to
7. Click Save, and click Save again
MacOS
If you use the Mail app on macOS to access your iCloud mail account, there are two ways that you can help make sure messages you want don’t end up in your spam folder. But unlike the previous three sets of instructions, you’ll have to go to two different places on your computer to do them. Here’s what they are.
Add a New Entry in Your Contacts
The macOS Mail app relies on a separate app called Contacts to manage its list of known addresses. So you’ll have to open that app if you want to add a new contact to the list. Once you’re there, you should:
1. Click the Add button at the bottom of the main window
2. Choose New Contact
3. Fill in the appropriate fields with the email address, name, and any other information you wish to include
4. Click Done
Add an Entry in Your Safe Senders List
Like Outlook.com, the macOS Mail app contains a safe senders list that you can use to specify addresses you wish to whitelist. Here’s how to add an address to it.
1. Select Mail, followed by Preferences from the Mail app menu bar
2. Click on the tab labeled Rules
3. Click Add Rule
4. Enter a memorable name for the new rule
5. Set the criteria to If any of the following conditions are met
6. Fill in the email you’d like to add in the blank space after the selection boxes From and Contains
7. Under Perform the following actions, choose Move message and Inbox, respectively
8. Click OK
9. Close the rules window
Further Troubleshooting Undelivered Mail
If you’ve whitelisted the address of a sender and you’re still not getting their messages, there’s a chance that they’re being blocked on the server level. As a regular user, you won’t be able to do anything to fix that. But you can contact your email provider to ask them to investigate your problem.
