We all know this feeling: you’ve done everything right. You’ve built a solid email list, made a compelling subject line, written a good copy, and designed a beautiful email with a clear CTA that can't be missed. You hit “send”, expecting a bunch of clicks and conversions, but you get nothing, or close to it. Your open rates are horrible, and your revenue is flat. What did you do wrong?
The problem might not be your content at all. It could be that you are a victim of the invisible wall that kills more marketing campaigns than anything other: poor email deliverability.
Getting this right isn’t easy, but it's important to do. If your emails aren't landing in the primary inbox, you are effectively burning your marketing budget for no real gain. Luckily for you, this guide will serve as a framework to diagnose and fix issues that prevent your emails from being seen.
Deliverability vs Delivery
Before you can fix the problem, you need to learn how to understand the basics. Most marketers use the terms “deliverability” and “delivery” interchangeably, but they are very different!
- Delivery
This is the simple part. It means the receiving server, like Gmail, accepted the email from your server. This also means it didn't bounce due to a fake address or spam flags. Once your email gets delivered, it goes to one of the inboxes, and this is where the problems happen.
- Deliverability
This is the hard part, but it's what matters. After the email gets accepted, where did it land? Did it go to the primary inbox, promotions tab, social tab, or, in the worst case, the spam folder? This is deliverability, and this is what makes a huge difference in performance.
Even with a 99% delivery rate, if all of your emails go to spam, then it's almost the same as having a delivery rate of 0%. And the problem is, compared to delivery, this is way harder to fix, as it takes more time and effort to do so.
Explaining Sender Reputation
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and others are the gatekeepers of the inbox. Based on their internal scoring system and AI analysis, they try and determine if you are a legitimate sender or a spammer. This score is called your sender reputation.
It’s like a credit score for your sending domain and IP address. A high score means you’re trusted and your emails get received in the inbox. A low score means you look suspicious, and your emails get sent to the spam folder or blocked entirely.
Your sender reputation is determined by a couple of key factors:
- Spam Complaints
The number of users who manually mark your emails as spam. This can really ruin your reputation quickly. You can hurt your score a lot by sending too many emails or having low-quality ones that the users just don’t engage with.
- User Engagement
How many people open, click on, reply to, or forward your emails? If this number is high, then good job, you will have a solid score; if it's a low number, then your reputation will slowly lose points.
- Bounce Rates
This is the percentage of emails that can’t be delivered. These jump high if you send a lot of unreachable emails. This shows that your list is unlikely to be well-maintained, and email providers don't like that.
- Sending History and Volume
If you are consistent, have a predictable sending volume, and you are generally trustworthy, your score will increase. The longer you do this, the better your score will be. If you slowly ramp up your rates, it will be much better for your score than suddenly doing huge email blasts from new domains.
- Technical Authentification
This is where we get practical. Proving you are who you say you are is done through technical standards.
Technical Fixes: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
In 2024, Google, Yahoo, and others had a major update on their technical authenticators. Now, they don’t consider SPF, DKIM, and DMARC as “good practice” but as a basic requirement for anyone sending bulk email.
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
SPF is a DNS text record that lists all the servers that are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain. The use of this is to prevent spammers from “spoofing” your domain and sending emails that look like they came from you.
It's like giving the post office a list of your approved email carriers so that they know if someone else tries to send something claiming to be you.
- DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
It adds a unique digital signature to every email you send. The receiving server can check this signature against your public key (Published in your DNS) to verify that the email is genuine and hasn't been tampered with. It proves the integrity and authenticity of the email itself.
- DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)
Other than having a huge name, DMARC is a DNS record that tells receiving servers what to do if an email fails the first two checks. You can tell them to do nothing, quarantine them, or reject them. It can also show you who is trying to send emails through your domain without approval.
The main goal of it is to enforce security policies and protect brands from spoofing. Usually, the route that is recommended is to do nothing, monitor reports, and then quarantine and reject them.
Sending Practices & List Hygiene
Getting your technical setup right is step one; maintaining a good sender reputation is something that might sound easy, but is actually quite difficult.
- Clean Your List
This is something you should try and do all the time. Regularly removing subscribers who haven’t opened or engaged with your emails in the last 6 months can help you maintain the quality of your list. You can also use list-cleaning services to identify and remove problematic email addresses. This is also the reason why you shouldn't buy an email list.
- Warm Up
If you are starting with a new domain or IP address, you can’t just start blasting 100k emails a day. You need to warm up your IP by starting with small and slowly increasing the volume. This builds trust with your ISP.
- Make Unsubscribing Easy
This might sound counterintuitive, but a simple and quick unsubscribe button can help you a lot. If your audience is not interested in the emails anymore, they should unsubscribe themselves rather than mark you as spam. In most cases, it's also a legal requirement, so it’s not worth avoiding.
- Manage Engagement
The goal is always to send emails that people want to open and click. You can ask them questions and encourage them to take action and reply. If they start engaging with you more, they will be way more likely to convert later on, and it's also a great sign for email services to know you are sending quality content.
- Watch Your Content
Avoid classic spam triggers. This includes excessive capitalization, exclamation points, flashy fonts, buzzwords related to finance, pharmaceuticals, or get-rich-quick schemes. Your content should be of genuine value and interesting to your audience.
Quick Troubleshooting Checklist
If you suspect you have a deliverability problem, here is where you should start:
- Check Blacklists
There are online tools like MXToolbox to see if your domain or IP is listed in any of the major spam blacklists.
- Verify Your Authentication
Use a validator tool to confirm SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are set up correctly.
- Analyze Your Bounce Reports
Look at your bounce logs. “Hard bounces,” like invalid addresses, are a problem with your list. “Soft bounces,” like full inbox or server down, are less critical and not always something you can influence.
- Check Your Engagement Metrics
If your open and click rates are declining, then you know that your sender reputation is slowly suffering.
Conclusion
Fixing email deliverability is about building proper foundations, following rules, and making good decisions in both content and pushes. You need a solid technical foundation and a good content plan that is value-oriented and that users want to engage with.
You should also make sure you always nurture your lists and maintain list hygiene. This way, you are protecting your brand, optimizing your marketing channel, and ensuring you get the best returns you can on your emails.
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