Howdylylive
Book a call

Leads & notifications

My team is not getting the lead emails.

Good news first: if a lead shows up in your portal, Howdy captured it perfectly and nothing is lost. When the email itself does not reach an inbox, it is almost always your email provider quietly filing it into a spam, junk, or quarantine folder. This is normal for a new sender, and it is a five minute fix.

Your leads are always safe in the portal

Every call, every caller number, and a full summary live in your Howdyly portal. The email is a convenience copy. So while you fix delivery, you can still work every lead from the portal.

The 60 second fix

Whatever email you use, these three steps solve it the vast majority of the time. Have each person on your team who should receive leads do this once.

  1. 1Open your Spam or Junk folder and find a message from hi@mail.howdyly.com with a subject like “New lead”.
  2. 2Mark it Not spam / Not junk. This moves it to your inbox and teaches your provider to trust us.
  3. 3Add hi@mail.howdyly.com to your contacts or safe senders so future leads land in the inbox.

The sender to allow

From address

hi@mail.howdyly.com

Sending domain

mail.howdyly.com

Replies go to

support@howdyly.com

Display name

Howdy

Step by step, by email provider

Not sure which you use? If your email address ends in your own business domain and your company uses Outlook, you are most likely on Microsoft 365. If it ends in @gmail.com or your business runs on Google, you are on Gmail.

Microsoft 365 and Outlook (work email)Most common for businesses

Microsoft is the strictest filter, so this is where most missing leads end up. There are two layers: what each person can do, and what your IT admin can do to fix it for the whole company at once.

Each team member (2 minutes)

  1. 1In Outlook, open the Junk Email folder.
  2. 2Right click a message from hi@mail.howdyly.com and choose Junk → Not Junk (or Report → Not junk).
  3. 3Add us to Safe Senders. In Outlook on the web: Settings (gear) → Mail → Junk email → Safe senders and domains → Add, then enter hi@mail.howdyly.com and also mail.howdyly.com. Save.

Your IT admin (the real fix, 5 minutes)

Per person settings do not always override Microsoft’s spam filter, so the durable fix is one allow rule at the company level. Send your IT person or whoever manages your email these two options:

  1. 1Release anything held. Go to the quarantine at security.microsoft.com/quarantine, filter the sender to mail.howdyly.com, select the held lead emails, and choose Release (tick “allow this sender” if offered).
  2. 2Allow us going forward. Best option: a mail flow rule in the Exchange admin center (Mail flow → Rules → add a rule) that, for messages from mail.howdyly.com, sets the spam confidence level (SCL) to -1. That tells Microsoft to skip spam filtering for our leads. The simpler alternative is adding mail.howdyly.com to the Tenant Allow/Block List under Policies & rules → Threat policies → Tenant Allow/Block Lists → Senders.
Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live (personal)
  1. 1Open the Junk Email folder and select a message from hi@mail.howdyly.com.
  2. 2Click Not junk at the top, then confirm.
  3. 3Go to Settings → Mail → Junk email → Safe senders and domains and add hi@mail.howdyly.com and mail.howdyly.com.
Gmail and Google Workspace

Each team member

  1. 1Open the Spam folder (left sidebar, you may need to click “More”).
  2. 2Open a message from hi@mail.howdyly.com and click Report not spam at the top.
  3. 3To guarantee it never happens again, create a filter: in the search bar click the sliders icon, put hi@mail.howdyly.com in the From field, click Create filter, then tick Never send it to Spam and apply.

Workspace admin (optional)

In the Google Admin console go to Apps → Google Workspace → Gmail → Spam, phishing and malware and add mail.howdyly.com to an approved senders list so leads bypass spam for everyone.

Yahoo Mail and AOL
  1. 1Open the Spam folder and select a message from hi@mail.howdyly.com.
  2. 2Click Not Spam to move it to your inbox.
  3. 3Add hi@mail.howdyly.com to your Contacts. Yahoo and AOL strongly favor senders who are saved contacts.
Apple iCloud Mail (@icloud.com, @me.com)
  1. 1Open the Junk mailbox and find a message from hi@mail.howdyly.com.
  2. 2Move it to your Inbox (drag it, or use the not junk flag). iCloud learns from this quickly.
  3. 3Open the message and add hi@mail.howdyly.com to your Contacts. iCloud delivers contacts straight to the inbox.
Any other provider
  1. 1Find the lead email in your spam or junk folder and mark it not spam.
  2. 2Add hi@mail.howdyly.com to your contacts or address book.
  3. 3If your provider has a safe senders, allowlist, or filter feature, allow the address hi@mail.howdyly.com and the domain mail.howdyly.com.

Why does this happen at all?

When a sender is new, mail providers have no history to judge it by, so they err on the side of caution and route the first messages to spam. The single best thing you can do is exactly what is above: mark a few of our emails as “not spam” and add us as a contact. Every time someone does that, your provider learns to trust Howdyly, and within a few days leads start landing in the inbox on their own. Our emails are fully authenticated (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all pass), so once you allow us, you are set.

Need a hand?

A real person on our team is happy to help. Email support@howdyly.com and we reply the same day. Prefer to talk it through? Reach Kate at kate@howdyly.com.

← Back to the Help Center