What you’ll find in this blog:
- Why Salesforce-generated emails are increasingly being quarantined, blocked, or flagged as suspicious
- How tightening SPF, DKIM, and DMARC enforcement is exposing hidden configuration gaps
- The common symptoms organisations are seeing across Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, and Account Engagement
- The practical steps businesses can take to improve email deliverability, trust, and security posture
Over the last 12–18 months, organisations have been tightening email security significantly. As a result, many businesses are now discovering that legitimate Salesforce-generated emails are suddenly being quarantined, flagged as suspicious, or blocked entirely by customer mail systems.
The issue is becoming increasingly common across:
· Salesforce Service Cloud
· Case Management emails
· Workflow and automation emails
· Experience Cloud notifications
· Account Engagement (Pardot)
· Org-Wide Email Addresses
For many organisations, nothing in Salesforce itself has changed – but the way mailbox providers and security platforms validate email authentication has.
What’s Changed?
Major email providers such as Microsoft and Google have increased enforcement around email authentication standards including:
· SPF
· DKIM
· DMARC
At the same time, more organisations are implementing advanced email security platforms. These systems are designed to protect users against phishing, spoofing, and impersonation attacks. However, they are also exposing long-standing configuration gaps that previously went unnoticed.
In many cases, organisations have had partially configured email authentication for years without issue. Historically, mailbox providers were far more forgiving, and many Salesforce-generated emails would still deliver successfully even if authentication was only partially configured.
As mailbox providers and security platforms continue to increase enforcement, these historical configuration gaps are now becoming visible. As a result, emails that previously “just worked” may now:
· Be quarantined
· Arrive with warning banners
· Fail security checks
· Be rejected entirely
Importantly, this is not typically caused by a recent Salesforce change or platform issue. Instead, it is the result of industry-wide tightening of email authentication and security standards across the wider email ecosystem.
Why Salesforce Emails Are Often Affected
Salesforce sends emails on behalf of your business domain. If authentication is not fully configured, recipient mail systems may see a mismatch between:
· The domain the email claims to come from
· The servers actually sending the email
· The authentication records published in DNS
This commonly happens when:
· DKIM has not been configured in Salesforce
· DMARC policies have recently been enabled or tightened
· Multiple sending platforms exist across the business
Many organisations only discover the issue after:
· Enabling DMARC
· A customer tightens inbound email security
· Critical emails fail to deliver
Common Symptoms Customers See
The issue can present in several ways, including:
· Customer case emails being held or quarantined
· Automated notifications not arriving
· Emails marked as suspicious or impersonation attempts
· Intermittent delivery failures
· Increased spam filtering
· Customer complaints about missing emails
In many cases, the email appears to send successfully from Salesforce, but is silently filtered by the recipient environment.
Why This Matters
For customer service and support teams, these issues can have a direct operational impact:
· Delayed customer responses
· Missed case updates
· Reduced customer confidence
· Increased support overhead
· Compliance and audit concerns
It also creates reputational risk when legitimate business communications are flagged as potentially unsafe.
The Good News
The issue is usually very fixable.
In most cases, remediation involves correctly configuring:
· Salesforce DKIM
· SPF alignment
· DMARC policies
· Domain authentication across all sending platforms
Once configured properly, organisations benefit from:
· Improved deliverability
· Better domain trust
· Reduced spoofing risk
· Stronger email security posture
· Readiness for newer standards such as BIMI
How Xenogenix Can Help
At Xenogenix, we are increasingly helping customers review and remediate Salesforce email authentication issues as part of wider platform health checks and managed services.
Our review can include:
· SPF analysis
· DKIM configuration for Salesforce
· DMARC assessment and rollout
· Account Engagement authentication review
· Deliverability troubleshooting
· Email security best practice guidance
As email security enforcement continues to tighten, ensuring your Salesforce environment is correctly authenticated is becoming an essential part of maintaining a secure and reliable customer experience.
If you would like support reviewing your current setup, get in touch with the Xenogenix team.