With billions of emails out there, it’s no surprise that some get flagged from time to time. Unfortunately, this can be extremely costly to your business when it happens. The last thing you want is for your email to be flagged by significant corporations and online filters. A negative report from services like Spamhaus will prevent emails from being sent from your domain name.

In this tutorial, we’re going to go over the basics of how you can make sure your email messages are not considered spam. Following these rules will significantly reduce your risks of being blacklisted or suffering negative backlash from the online community.

How to Comply with the CAN-SPAM Act

You’ve likely heard of the CAN-SPAM act, but are you in compliance? Most business owners don’t know that there are rules for email marketing and creating a compliant email list. Even fewer know the steps required to comply with those requirements.

We’ve put together a list with 8 essential tips for following the CAN-SPAM act.

1) Don’t Buy Email Lists

Many mailing lists are created by scraping a website for public contact information. It doesn’t matter if the individual is open to solicitation or not. And this is what causes the problem – it’s a quick way to give your brand a reputation as a “spammer.”

Building an email list is always a good idea. Adding email subscribers to your site makes it easier to engage and deepen customer relationships and promote products and drive sales.
The best way to build up that subscriber list is by giving away something relevant, whether in exchange for the visitor’s email address or any other piece of information they can share with you.

2) Don’t Use False or Misleading Header Information

Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.

3) Don’t Use Deceptive Subject Lines

The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message. Being deceptive in the subject line can annoy recipients and ensure the message is caught in a spam trap.

4) Disclose if the Message is an Ad

You must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement. If people expect a message to be an ad, they are more likely to treat it as such.

5) Provide Contact Information

Displaying your business’ physical address is an excellent way to reduce looking spammy. This gives everyone a clear view of how they can contact you. This provides a sense of legitimacy to the message.

6) Allow Recipients to “Opt-out” of Receiving Future Email From You

One of the essential rules of email marketing is ensuring recipients can opt-out (Unsubscribe) of future emails. Not everyone is receptive to email marketing; some may simply change their mind about your content.

7) Honor Opt-out Requests Promptly

When providing an opt-out link, make sure it’s honored. If someone leaves your mailing list and still receives emails from you, the person may file a complaint against your domain with spam filtering agencies. The result is a blacklisted domain.

8) Pay Close Attention to your Domain’s Email Activity

Keep an eye on what messages are sent from your domain. You want to ensure everyone using your domain to send emails is doing so according to the CAN-SPAM act.

Users are not the only ones who can take advantage of your domain, either. Some malware is capable of using your mailing servers for spamming others.

Suppose you don’t have the time to keep an eye on your server’s outgoing email activity. In that case, you can consider using an automated outgoing email filtering service and protect your server’s IP reputation.

If you’re using a mail client to send emails, ensure your anti-virus software is active and up to date. The last thing you want is for your domain to be flagged by Spamhaus because one computer on your network is infected with spamming malware.

Use Email Responsibly

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools available. Hundreds of thousands of emails are sent out to recipients every second of the day, with many using it as their primary channel for business. However, a saturated inbox can make your emails drop off quickly and lead to spam blacklists or false positives.

By following best practices, you can ensure that each email you send receives a high open rate and is not perceived as spam.

The Spam Filters option in cPanel, formerly known as Spam Assassin, gives you the option to configure the spam filter settings (powered by Apache SpamAssassin) for your account. Spam filters identify and sort or delete unsolicited email, commonly known as spam. You can also use this interface to configure your whitelist and blacklist settings.

In this Knowledge Base article, we will cover the settings and configuration of the Spam Filters options.

Let’s begin!

Enabling and Disabling the Spam Filters in cPanel

Step 1: Login to your cPanel. There’s a lot of ways to do this, but the sure-fire easiest way is to login to your Client Area, then open your cPanel.

Step 2: Scroll down in your cPanel and look for the Email Section. Once you’ve located that, click the Spam Filters option to open the Spam Filters utility.

Step 3: Once the Spam Filters utility is open, you’ll have a few options.

Let’s review these options.

Process New Emails and Mark them as Spam

The first option, Process New Emails and Mark them as spam is a global setting that allows you to enable or disable Spam Filtering. If you are a brave person and choose to manage this on your own, you have the option to disable this for your account. Otherwise, by default, any message that exceeds the Spam Threshold Score of 5 will be marked as Spam.

Adjusting the Spam Threshold Score

If you would like to change the Spam Threshold Score, you can do so by clicking the option, and on the Adjust Spam Threshold Score page, you can use the drop-down menu to select a different score level.

If you do change the Threshold Score, be sure to click the blue Update Scoring Options button to save your changes!

Move New Spam to a Separate Folder (Spam Box)

The option beneath the first option, Move New Spam to a Separate Folder (Spam Box), is the setting which when enabled will move e-mail detected as spam to a dedicated folder in the e-mail account called Spam.

Configuring the Spam Box Settings

By clicking Configure Spam Box settings, there are several options you can use:

The first option with the blue button, Empty the Spam Box folder, will empty the Spam Box folder for the cPanel user’s default mail account. This can sometimes be helpful if you find the account rapidly filling with spam.

You also have the option to Empty all Spam Box Folders if you have users on your account who refuse to empty their junk mail and it’s consuming all of their account space. You can make that choice for them.

You also have the option to jump into the Manage Email Disk Usage utility.

Automatically Delete New Spam (Auto-Delete)

The Automatically Delete New Spam option can be useful in the right circumstance. For example, if you own a domain that is just hammered with spam email no matter what you do, you can have this setting save you from having to empty your spam boxes.

Configuring the Auto-Delete Settings

If you open the Configure Auto-Delete Settings link, you will have another way to enable or disable the option.

Additional Configurations (For Advanced Users)

There are 3 additional options that can be used:

Let’s explore these settings.

Whitelist

The whitelist function allows you to whitelist either a specific email address or all mail from a specific domain name. This means any email sent to your domain from that email address or domain, depending on your setup will bypass the spam filter and be delivered to the inbox.

This is super useful if you find that you subscribe to a newsletter that is frequently flagged as spam, even if you’ve tried to train the Spam Filter not to mark it as spam. Or if you have users who must ensure that any message sent from any account at a specific domain must be delivered to the inbox. This can happen if you have automation that relies on email message delivery for triggering.

Configuring Whitelist Settings

Clicking Edit Spam Whitelist Settings will open the Whitelist utility where you can add a new whitelist from items.

To do this, just click the blue link, Add A New whitelist_from Item.

Here, you would specify the email addresses that the system should not tag as spam.

Blacklist

The blacklist function will mark any messages sent from a domain or email address on the Blacklist as spam. This can be useful if a particular email address or domain name is consistently spamming you.

Configuring Blacklist Settings

Clicking Edit Spam Blacklist Settings will open up the Blacklist Utility where you can add new email addresses or domains to block.

Calculated Spam Score Settings

Apache SpamAssassin uses hundreds of tests, and you can assign scores to individual tests to configure Apache SpamAssassin for your server. Use this interface to modify the individual test scores that Apache SpamAssassin uses to mark a message as spam. You can increase the score of a test that incorrectly allows spam messages to pass through. Conversely, you can disable or reduce the score of a test that falsely marks messages as spam. For example, you can disable tests that mark bankruptcy emails as spam for a user who is a bankruptcy lawyer.

To update a score, select a new score from the drop-down menu list of scores, and enter a value that contains up to 3 decimal places.

Set the score to 0 to disable the test.

When you’ve finished, be sure to click the blue Update Scoring Options button to save your changes.

For more information on the various tests, click here to open the Documentation on Spam Scores.

Removal of the old MX records is required, in order to make sure that all the emails are filtered through the SpamExperts incoming email filtering, and not through different MX records (such as with the highest numbered priority) to bypass spam filters.

How to Set up SpamExperts MX Records

If your domain name is using our name servers, please follow the steps below:

1) Log into cPanel for the account you wish to make the changes to.

2) Click the Zone Editor link under the Domains section.

3) Click Manage button for the domain you wish to modify the MX records from the list.

4) Remove all the existing MX records.

5) Click on + Add Record button and select Add MX Record from the list.

6) Add the following MX records, one by one:

• mx.spamexperts.com (Priority 10)
• fallbackmx.spamexperts.eu (Priority 20)    
• lastmx.spamexperts.net (Priority 30)

Please have the screenshots below as a reference on how you should add each MX record.

That’s it! Now that you have added the MX records, you will need to allow it a few minutes for the DNS to be fully propagated.

Your emails will now pass through the SpamExperts incoming email filtering. Incoming emails are securely analyzed and scanned in real time. No training or configurations are required and everything works out of the box. Any message detected as spam is moved to the quarantine, while non-spam is sent to your email server.

No more wasted time in dealing with spam, simply focus your energy on business tasks, while you remain in full control.

In conclusion, the advantage of setting up Email filters directly from cPanel is that you can preset user defined specifications remotely. This will consequently enable them to remain activated regardless of the location or device the user is accessing his or hers’ Emails from.

Make sure you test them out and set up more complex rules combinations to see how they are processed.

However, in some situations, it may be helpful to train SpamAssassin yourself. This will help prevent good emails from going to spam, and bad emails from getting to your inbox.

To set this up, you need to use the sa-learn program which is only available to customers who have their email addresses configured to utilize the IMAP service.

How to train SpamAssassin

1) Create a folder titled spam within webmail or your email client.

2) Subscribe to the newly created spam folder using the Subscribe/Unsubscribe Folder feature of your webmail or email client.

3) Next, we need to set up a cron jobs to automate the training process. For information on how to configure the commands listed below in a cronjob, please choose your panel from the link below.

• How to setup and manage Cron Jobs

We will need to configure both of the commands individually within their own cron jobs to ensure that the learning process will work.

Example #1:

To have training learn from one email address on a specific domain that you have configured:

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/sa-learn -p ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs --spam ~/mail/$domain.tld/$mailbox/.spam/{cur,new} >/dev/null 2>&1

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/sa-learn -p ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs --ham ~/mail/$domain.tld/$mailbox/{cur,new} >/dev/null 2>&1

Example #2:

To have training learn from all the email address of a particular domain that you have configured:

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/sa-learn -p ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs --spam ~/mail/$domain.tld/*/.spam/{cur,new} >/dev/null 2>&1

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/sa-learn -p ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs --ham ~/mail/$domain.tld/*/{cur,new} >/dev/null 2>&1

Example #3:

To have training learn from all the email address on all additional domains that you have configured:

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/sa-learn -p ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs --spam ~/mail/*/*/.spam/{cur,new} >/dev/null 2>&1

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/sa-learn -p ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs --ham ~/mail/*/*/{cur,new} >/dev/null 2>&1

In the event that you wish to change the folder in which your spam and ham messages are filtered to, you will need to repeat the same steps as above where you create the folder, subscribe to it and then schedule the cron job. The only change is that you need to modify the folder name in the path for your cron job.

Example 4:

To have training learn from one email address on one domain using custom folders (junk & good).

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/sa-learn -p ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs --spam ~/mail/$domain.tld/$mailbox/.junk/{cur,new} >/dev/null 2>&1

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/sa-learn -p ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs --ham ~/mail/$domain.tld/$mailbox/.good/{cur,new} >/dev/null 2>&1

That’s it! You now know how to set up training with SpamAssassin. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below, or you can contact our 24/7 support team via Client Area.

Enabling/Disabling SpamAssassin:

1) Go to https://lab.chemicloud.com and login into your account.

2) Click on the “Services” icon located in the left menu.

3) Click on the “Login CP” icon.

4) In the Mail section of the cPanel home screen, click “Spam Assassin”.

5) On this page find the email account that you are trying to configure, and press the “Set Up Mail Client” link:

6) Click on “Enable Spam Assassin” or “Disable Spam Assassin” depending on what you are trying to achieve.