How to determine email inbox rate without ESP data?

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that personalized filtering makes it hard to give a true inbox rate as it's tuned to the individual recipient. Seedlists might be used to get the numbers.

Email marketer from Stackoverflow describes that setting up feedback loops (FBLs) with major ISPs allows you to receive complaints from recipients and identify spam issues impacting inbox placement. It helps determine if your recipients marked your email as spam.

Email marketer from Email Geeks mentions ReturnPath Certification provides inbox placement data for certain mailbox providers, while other methods involve informed guesses based on proxy data.

Email marketer from Litmus explains that maintaining good list hygiene by removing inactive or invalid email addresses and segmenting your audience based on engagement can improve sender reputation and increase inbox placement rates.

Email marketer from Sendinblue shares that using seed lists (email addresses you control across different providers) and tracking where your emails land can give you an idea of inbox placement rates.

Email marketer from Mailjet explains that without ESP data, analyzing your sender reputation through tools like Google Postmaster Tools and Sender Score can provide insights into deliverability.

Email marketer from Mailgun shares that monitoring your IP address reputation through tools like Talos Intelligence and Spamhaus can help you identify if your IP is blacklisted, which can impact deliverability, and helps you track how this reputation changes with your sends.

Email marketer from EmailOctopus explains that monitoring engagement metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and complaint rates, segmented by domain (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), can indirectly indicate inbox placement performance.

Email marketer from GlockApps explains that utilizing tools that perform inbox placement testing with real inboxes can give you a clear understanding of your inbox rate across different providers, without relying on ESP data.

Email marketer from Reddit shares that meticulously analyzing bounce messages can uncover reasons for failed delivery, such as blocked IP addresses or spam filtering, thus providing indirect insight into deliverability problems.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that ISP throttling can significantly impact inbox placement, and monitoring your sending volume alongside engagement metrics can provide clues about whether throttling is affecting your deliverability, offering a workaround to direct inbox rate data.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests monitoring trending performance metrics (opens, clicks, unsubscribes) on a domain-by-domain basis for the largest domains to indicate inbox placement and potential issues.

Expert from Word to the Wise answers that implementing strong authentication methods like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are extremely vital for deliverability and can also indirectly affect inboxing rates by ensuring that legitimate email is not being rejected or sent to spam.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that while seed lists can provide *some* insight into deliverability, they are a flawed method for determining actual inbox placement rates because they do not reflect the personalized filtering applied to real users.

Expert from Email Geeks explains it's possible the vendor's data is accurate but far from guaranteed and highlights the difference between panel data tools and direct inbox testing.

Documentation from Google explains that using Google Postmaster Tools provides insights into your domain's reputation, spam rate, and feedback loop, helping you understand deliverability to Gmail users.

Documentation from RFC Editor explains that implementing Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records helps prevent spoofing and improves deliverability by allowing receiving mail servers to verify that emails are sent from authorized mail servers.

Documentation from RFC Editor defines DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), an email authentication system that allows the receiver to verify that an email was sent and authorized by the owner of the domain. This can help in improve the chances that emails are not marked as spam.

Documentation from DMARC.org explains that implementing Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) policies provides control over what happens to unauthorized email using your domain name and provides reporting on email authentication failures, greatly assisting in email deliverability.

Documentation from Microsoft shares that utilizing Microsoft's Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) allows you to monitor your IP address's health and identify potential deliverability issues when sending to Outlook.com, Hotmail, and other Microsoft domains.