Summary
Email experts address customer deliverability issues through a multifaceted approach. Foundational steps include ensuring proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), closely monitoring sender reputation via bounce rates, complaints, and engagement, and adhering to bulk sender guidelines provided by mailbox providers like Gmail and Microsoft. Maintaining list hygiene through regular cleaning and implementing double opt-in processes is also critical. Additional strategies involve optimizing email content to avoid spam triggers, ensuring proper email design and HTML, setting up feedback loops with ISPs, and adjusting sending volume through throttling. Some troubleshooting involves investigating customer-specific issues or acknowledging that certain deliverability problems fall outside their area of expertise.
Key findings
- Authentication: Proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is critical for ensuring deliverability and preventing spoofing.
- Reputation Monitoring: Monitoring IP and domain reputation, as well as sender reputation metrics, helps diagnose and address deliverability problems.
- List Hygiene: Maintaining a clean and engaged email list significantly improves deliverability rates.
- Content Optimization: Optimizing email content to avoid spam triggers and ensuring clean HTML code are essential.
- Feedback Loops: Setting up feedback loops with ISPs provides valuable data on spam complaints.
- Throttling: Adjusting sending volume through throttling can prevent spam filters from being triggered.
Key considerations
- Sender Guidelines: Adhere to bulk sender guidelines provided by major mailbox providers.
- Customer Specific Issues: Investigate customer-specific issues to identify the source of the problem.
- Blacklist Checks: Regularly check IP addresses and domains against blacklists.
- Engagement Analysis: Monitor engagement metrics to identify subscribers who are not interacting with emails.
- Email Design and Rendering: Ensure emails are designed to render correctly across various email clients and devices.
- Scope of Expertise: Understand the limits of one's expertise when it comes to individual deliverability problems.
What email marketers say
10 marketer opinions
Email experts troubleshoot customer deliverability issues by addressing various factors. These include investigating customer-specific problems, like those stemming from URLs, ensuring proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), monitoring IP and domain reputation through blocklist checks, and maintaining a clean email list. Strategies also involve optimizing email content to avoid spam trigger words and ensuring proper email design and HTML. Additionally, monitoring sender reputation metrics, such as bounce rates and engagement, and adjusting sending volume through throttling are vital.
Key opinions
- Authentication: Proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is critical for deliverability.
- Reputation Monitoring: Monitoring IP and domain reputation helps diagnose deliverability issues.
- List Hygiene: Maintaining a clean email list improves deliverability.
- Content Optimization: Avoiding spam trigger words and optimizing email design are important.
- Sender Reputation: Monitoring sender reputation metrics helps identify deliverability problems.
- Throttling: Adjusting sending volume can prevent spam filters from being triggered.
Key considerations
- Customer Issues: Investigate specific customer-related issues, such as problems with URLs in their emails.
- Blacklist Checks: Regularly check IP and domain against blacklists to avoid delivery problems.
- Engagement Metrics: Monitor engagement metrics to identify issues and adjust strategies accordingly.
- Email Design: Ensure proper email design and HTML to improve rendering and avoid spam filters.
- Double Opt-in: Use double opt-in to ensure subscribers are genuinely interested in receiving emails.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Mailjet shares that monitoring your sending IP's reputation is crucial for diagnosing deliverability problems; low reputation scores with blocklists will cause delivery issues, and proactively monitoring and maintaining a positive reputation is key.
27 Mar 2024 - Mailjet
Marketer view
Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that maintaining a clean email list is important. Regularly remove inactive subscribers and those who have unsubscribed. Use double opt-in to ensure subscribers are genuinely interested in receiving emails.
7 Sep 2021 - Email on Acid
What the experts say
3 expert opinions
Email experts approach customer deliverability troubleshooting in various ways. One expert avoids individual mail delivery issues, considering it outside their scope. Others emphasize the importance of sender reputation monitoring, involving analyzing bounce rates, complaints, and engagement. Additionally, ensuring proper sender authentication through SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is seen as crucial for verifying identity and building trust with mailbox providers.
Key opinions
- Reputation: Understanding and monitoring sender reputation is crucial for identifying deliverability issues.
- Authentication: Proper sender authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is a fundamental step in troubleshooting.
- Triaging: Some experts avoid troubleshooting single mail delivery problems due to scope or difficulty.
Key considerations
- Scope of work: Determine the scope of deliverability troubleshooting efforts; some issues may fall outside the responsibility of certain experts.
- Metrics analysis: Analyze bounce rates, complaint rates, and engagement metrics to gain insights into sender reputation.
- Authentication Protocols: Ensure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are correctly implemented to verify sender identity and improve deliverability.
Expert view
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that a fundamental step in troubleshooting deliverability is ensuring proper sender authentication. This includes implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to verify your identity and prevent email spoofing, ultimately building trust with mailbox providers.
12 Jan 2025 - Word to the Wise
Expert view
Expert from Spam Resource shares that understanding and monitoring your sender reputation is key. This involves analyzing bounce rates, complaint rates, and engagement metrics to identify and address issues negatively impacting deliverability.
3 Jun 2025 - Spam Resource
What the documentation says
5 technical articles
Email experts and documentation emphasize several key strategies for troubleshooting customer deliverability issues. These include adhering to bulk sender guidelines, particularly setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for email authentication, maintaining low spam rates, and actively monitoring sender reputation using tools like Postmaster Tools. Avoiding spam filters by using a dedicated IP address and ensuring clean content is also important. Furthermore, implementing feedback loops with ISPs allows for the removal of subscribers who mark emails as spam, thus improving sender reputation.
Key findings
- Authentication: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are essential for email authentication and preventing spoofing.
- Sender Reputation: Monitoring sender reputation is crucial for identifying and addressing deliverability issues.
- Spam Prevention: Following best practices to avoid spam filters is critical for inbox placement.
- Feedback Loops: Feedback loops provide valuable data on spam complaints, allowing for list cleaning.
Key considerations
- Bulk Sender Guidelines: Adhere to specific guidelines provided by mailbox providers like Gmail and Microsoft.
- Dedicated IP: Consider using a dedicated IP address for sending to improve reputation and control.
- Content Quality: Ensure email content does not trigger spam filters by avoiding certain words and design elements.
- DNS Records: Properly configure DNS records for SPF to authorize sending mail servers.
Technical article
Documentation from RFC specifies the technical standard for DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance), which helps email senders protect their domains from unauthorized use, commonly known as email spoofing.
14 Jan 2025 - RFC
Technical article
Documentation from Microsoft Learn outlines best practices for avoiding spam filters, including authenticating email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, using a dedicated IP address, and ensuring content doesn't trigger spam filters.
7 Jan 2023 - Microsoft Learn
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