BRM sends emails (e.g. online booking confirmations etc) on your behalf. We set the 'reply to' address to be your chosen address, but the emails actually come from the BRM servers bookings.bikerentalmanager.com
We do our bit, but you need to do your bit too. Many of our customers enjoy great email open rates (high 60%) but can only be achieved if you also setup some fundamentals.BRM already takes steps to maintain the reputation of its domains, and part of that was implementing SPF, DKIM and DMARC (currently 99.99% of BRM booking emails are reported as compliant to these standards).
However, the sending (and receiving) of emails is a complicated area and if you are not careful your emails may be marked as SPAM by your recipients.
The vast majority of BRM users have the BRM Online Booking Wizard (OBW) embedded on their website. With that, take a look at this diagram below illustrating the journey a customer goes through when making a booking:
Taking a closer look at what is actually going on step by step in the above diagram,
Your customer visits your website and books a bike on the BRM OBW.
A booking in your BRM is created.
BRM sends a confirmation on your behalf to your customer from our dedicated domain bookings.bikerentalmanager.com.
Your customer's email client (this could be Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, to name a few) receives the email and decides if it's (a) Important or (b) SPAM.
So how does your customer's email client decide what's SPAM?
This is the tricky bit, each email client has different rules about what it thinks is SPAM or important. Even though our domain has a fantastic reputation because we have set 'reply to' as your domain, many email clients will check out the settings on your domain to decide if they think it is a good email or not.
What improvements can I make?
Here are some tangible things you can do to maximise the number of emails that get through successfully:
Implement SPF (Sender Policy Framework) Find out how here →
Simply speaking, Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a security mechanism created to prevent the bad guys from sending emails on your behalf.
Implement DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) Find out how here →
By setting DKIM on your DNS server, you’re adding an additional way to tell your receivers “yes, it’s really me who’s sending this message”.
Beware of forwarding emails Find out more here →
Make sure you personalise your emails as much as possible. We recommend using placeholders to achieve this.
Please note. You should NOT add bookings.bikerentalmanager.com into your SPF. We are not pretending to be sending from your website, but with your email as the reply-to address. We are sending from our domain. However, we need you to have a well-configured SPF otherwise emails will still get marked as spam.
External Links (further reading)
non-techy speak: What is SPF & DKIM? And Why You Want to Have It Set Up (Updated)
transaction emails and promotions tab: maximising open rates
gmail specific open rates: Your email list, the Gmail algorithm....
gmail promostions tab: how to improve open rates
From DMARCLY, How to Implement DMARC/DKIM/SPF to Stop Email Spoofing/Phishing: The Definitive Guide
UK National Cyber Security Centre, Email security and anti-spoofing
US Department of Homeland Security, CISA INSIGHTS Enhance Email & Web Security
See Also