Crewing emails in spam: SPF, DKIM and DMARC in plain words
You sent seafarers' CVs to a shipowner and heard nothing back — the email may simply be sitting in spam. For a crewing agency email is the main working tool, and it only needs to be set up properly once.
Why emails end up in spam
Shipowners' mail services — Gmail, Outlook, corporate filters — check whether an email really came from your domain. If the check fails, the message goes to spam or is not delivered at all.
Common causes: company emails sent from free @gmail.com boxes, missing domain records, dozens of scan attachments, and vacancy mailings to hundreds of addresses from a work mailbox.
Three records your domain needs
- SPF — the list of servers allowed to send email for your domain.
- DKIM — a digital signature on every message, so the recipient sees it was not altered on the way.
- DMARC — the rule for messages that fail the check, plus reports on attempts to send mail in your name.
- All three are lines in your domain settings (DNS). They take about an hour and work for years.
Check yourself in 5 minutes
Send an email from your work mailbox to your Gmail and open "Show original". SPF, DKIM and DMARC should all say PASS. FAIL or a missing record means the mail needs setting up.
- Write to shipowners from company-domain addresses — crew@, cv@, info@ — they are trusted more than @gmail.com.
- Send a batch of scans as one folder link, not ten attachments.
- Send vacancy mailings through a mailing service or a Telegram channel, not from your work mailbox.
What I do
I check your mail and domain, set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC, move staff to company addresses and turn on two-factor protection. If needed, I migrate old mail without losses. I have worked with crewing agencies in Batumi for 20 years; for agencies elsewhere this is done remotely.