One Flooring: Fixing Business Email That Bounced or Landed in Spam

The project at a glance

• Client: One Flooring, a flooring business in Kellyville Ridge NSW
• Service: Email deliverability and Google Workspace setup
• Starting point: Business email running on basic hosting email, with emails bouncing or landing in spam
• Scope: Domain and DNS review, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, a move from hosting email to Google Workspace, 5 user accounts, shared calendars and shared drives, testing and handover
• Ownership: Done remotely with access granted by the owner. One Flooring stays the owner of its domain and every account.

The problem: emails that never reached customers

One Flooring’s emails were bouncing back or going straight to spam. For a business that sends quotes and follows up by email, that means missed jobs and customers who think nobody replied.

The cause was not what they wrote. It was how their domain’s email was set up. Without correct SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, Gmail, Outlook and other providers cannot confirm that an email really came from the business, so they treat it with suspicion.

The business also had no website, and did not need one yet. That is common for trades and service businesses, and it does not change the basics: the domain still sends email, so it still needs to be set up properly.

What we did

1. Checked the domain first. We reviewed the domain’s DNS and email records to find exactly what was causing the bounces and spam filtering.
2. Moved email from hosting to Google Workspace. The team’s email moved off basic hosting email onto Google Workspace, on One Flooring’s own domain.
3. Created 5 user accounts. Each team member got their own business email account, with shared calendars and shared drives so everyone works from one place.
4. Fixed SPF. One correct SPF record listing the services allowed to send email for the domain.
5. Switched on DKIM. Every outgoing email is now digitally signed, so receiving mail servers can check it was not forged or changed on the way.
6. Set DMARC to quarantine. Email that fails the checks is now sent to spam instead of being delivered as if it were genuine, which makes it much harder for scammers to send email pretending to be One Flooring.
7. Tested before finishing. We confirmed email was sending and arriving properly before handing over, and walked the team through how it all fits together.

What is in place now

Three lessons for any small business

1. If customers say “I never got your email”, check your settings before your wording. Missing or incorrect SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are the most common cause, and they can be fixed.
2. You do not need a website to need proper email. If your business emails from its own domain, that domain needs to be set up correctly, whether or not a website sits on it.
3. Keep ownership. Your domain, your Google Workspace and your accounts should be in your business’s name, not your IT person’s.

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