In this article, you’ll learn how to improve your email deliverability and get your messages exactly where they need to be. Did you know that 162,000 million emails end up in the spam folder every year? This figure represents the biggest challenge you face in your email marketing campaigns.

Deliverability determines whether your emails make it to the main inbox or get lost in spam. Messages that are not seen simply do not generate results. It can seem complex because there are multiple factors involved: from your content to your domain’s technical setup.

Remember that the situation has become more demanding. Gmail and Yahoo implemented major policy changes during February 2024. These changes force bulk senders to use custom domains and meet specific authentication requirements.

Email providers are constantly evaluating how users interact with your messages. This information decides whether your next email will make it to your main inbox or to the dreaded spam. Is your content optimized for mobile devices? 85% of your contacts check their emails from their phone.

Below, we’ll show you proven strategies that work. By applying these 7 steps you will get your emails where it really matters: the main inbox of your contacts.

What is email deliverability and why does it matter?

Deliverability measures whether your emails reach your contacts’ main inbox. It doesn’t matter if they open them later or not. The crucial thing is that they get where they need to go. A deliverability rate greater than 95% is considered good.

Think of it this way: you can create the most engaging email in the world, but if it ends up in spam, no one will see it. All your effort will have been useless.

The process works like this: when you send an email, it travels through a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) that communicates with a Domain Name Server (DNS). This system locates the recipient’s mail server.

SMTP servers then make a critical decision: place your message in the main inbox, send it to spam, or block it completely. This decision is based on specific factors:

• Your domain reputation and IP
• How users have interacted with your previous emails
• The quality of your content
• Your sending frequency
• The open rates recorded
• The verified authenticity of the sender

If you want your campaigns to generate results, you must take care of these five fundamental aspects:

1. Goal Fulfillment
37.5% of marketers confirm that the biggest problem with getting into spam is that recipients miss important information. This especially affects transactional emails such as order confirmations.

2. Protecting your reputation
When someone gives you their email, they make an agreement with you. If your emails don’t arrive, you break that trust. 15.9% of specialists consider reputational damage to be one of the main problems.

3. Impact on sales
Poor deliverability directly reduces your revenue. 9% of professionals recognize that not reaching the main tray decreases the results of email marketing.

4. Customer
satisfaction 15.8% of experts point out that improving deliverability increases customer satisfaction. Messages that get through correctly create smoother experiences.

5. Resource
optimization If you invest time and money in creating campaigns that don’t reach their destination, you’re wasting valuable resources.

Deliverability works like a cycle: positive interactions (clicks, opens) improve your reputation, while negative interactions (spam, bounces) deteriorate it. It tells you if you’re sending the right content to the right people at the right time.

Deliverability isn’t just a technical number. It reflects the quality of your email marketing strategy and the relationship you’ve built with your subscribers.

Step 1: Assess your current situation

How can you improve something you don’t know well? Before implementing changes to your email marketing strategy, you need to know exactly where you stand. We recommend that you perform a full analysis of your current data to identify areas that need attention.

Review your open and bounce metrics

The open rate reflects how many recipients open your emails. For more accurate data, use the Unique Open Rate, which doesn’t count repeat opens from the same recipient.

The calculation is simple: divide the unique opens by the emails delivered and multiply by 100. This percentage will allow you to compare your performance with your industry standards.

The bounce rate indicates what percentage of emails could not be delivered. Keep this metric below 2% to preserve your reputation as a sender. There are two main types:

• Hard bounces: Non-existent addresses or domains (permanent failures)
• Soft bounces: Full trays or temporary server failures

A high bounce rate damages your reputation and indicates that you urgently need to clean up your database.

Check if you’re blacklisted

Blacklisting blocks the delivery of your messages or sends them directly to spam. Use free tools like MXToolbox to check your status:

Step 1: Access the tool and select “Blacklist Check”
Step 2: Enter your domain or IP
address Step 3: Review the results to identify issues

If you appear on any blacklists, you can request their removal by following the specific procedures. However, first identify and correct the causes that caused this situation.

Red flags that indicate reputational problems:

• Sudden increase in email bounces
• Sharp decline in open rates
• Spam complaints greater than 0.1% (maximum acceptable threshold)

Analyze your contacts’ engagement

Engagement directly determines your deliverability. Greater engagement means greater trust from mail providers in your mailings.

Consider both positive actions (opens, clicks, archiving) and negative actions (unsubscribes, marks as spam, deletion without opening).

Engagement Insights show you:

• Openings recorded per day
• Evolution of the open rate
• Segmenting contacts by activity level

This segmentation classifies your recipients into:

• Highly active: Consistently engage with your campaigns
• Assets: Average Regular Engagement
• Low Active: Low Engagement or New Subscribers
• Inactive: No interaction with your messages
• Error: High number of bounces

Identifying these segments allows you to create customized strategies for each group, improving your overall deliverability.

Conducting this assessment is not a one-size-fits-all process. You should repeat it periodically to catch problems early and maintain the health of your email campaigns.

Step 2: Set up authentication for your domain correctly

Authenticating your domain is one of the most important technical pillars to get your emails to their destination. Not only does this setup improve deliverability, but it also protects your brand from impersonation and reinforces the trust of your recipients.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC: what they are and how to configure them

These three protocols work together to prove that you are a legitimate sender:

SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Specifies which servers can send mail from your domain. It works as a public list that allows you to verify the authorized origin of your messages.

To set SPF correctly:

1. Create a TXT record in your domain’s DNS
2. Define all IPs authorized to send emails
3. Set a policy for unauthorized email

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Add an invisible digital signature to every email you send. Receiving servers verify this signature using a public key that you publish in your DNS.

To set up DKIM:

1. Generates a key pair (private and public)
2. Add the public key as a TXT record in your DNS
3. Configure your server to sign messages with the private key

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance): Relies on SPF and DKIM to set policies on emails that fail verifications. In addition, it sends you detailed reports on the authentication results.

To set up DMARC:

1. Make sure you have SPF and DKIM working properly
2. Create a DMARC TXT record in your DNS
3. Define the policy to be applied (none, quarantine or reject)
4. Set up an address to receive reports

Remember that Google and Yahoo implemented since February 2024 the obligation to have DKIM, SPF and DMARC configured for senders of mass mailings.

Why use a custom domain

We strongly recommend using a custom domain for your campaigns. The advantages are obvious:

Professionalism: An email from [email protected] transmits much more seriousness than [email protected]. Your recipients immediately recognize who is writing to them.

Better reputation: Email providers rely more on custom domains, reducing the chances of ending up in spam.

Full control: You can create specific addresses (soporte@, ventas@, info@) according to your company’s needs.

Enhanced security: Only with custom domains can you correctly apply SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, protecting against spoofing and phishing.

Regulatory compliance: It helps you comply with regulations such as GDPR by clearly identifying the sender.

Once you set up authentication for your domain, you’ll have built a solid foundation for your email marketing strategy. This technical setup should be complemented with good content and list management practices to achieve the best results.

Successful authentication not only improves your chances of reaching the main tray, but it adds an extra layer of security that protects both your brand and your recipients.

Step 3: Improve your sender reputation

Your sender reputation determines whether your emails make it to the main inbox or get caught up in spam. Vendors constantly evaluate your behavior before deciding where to place your messages. Here are three fundamental actions to build a solid reputation.

Avoid frequent changes to the sender’s name

Consistency builds trust. Google has set specific guidelines on sender names because frequent changes trigger red flags similar to those used by spammers.

We recommend that you avoid these problematic practices:

• Include subject content in the sender’s name
• Use names like “LAST CHANCE” or “URGENT OFFER”
• Include the recipient’s name in the sender field
• Add emojis or non-standard characters

Use a name that clearly reflects your brand. If you need to make changes, do so in a planned manner and no more than once every 30-60 days.

Don’t use free emails like Gmail or Yahoo

Since February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo have implemented stricter rules for bulk email senders. Using free domains like @gmail.com presents several problems:

1. Lower credibility: More than 75% of consumers expect businesses to use their own domain.
2. Authentication issues: Yahoo has a DMARC policy set to “p=reject”, which means that any email sent using a Yahoo address will bounce completely.
3. Increased likelihood of spam: Emails from free domains are more likely to end up in the spam folder.

Therefore, it’s critical to use an address connected to your own domain (such as [email protected]). This will improve your deliverability and reinforce your brand identity.

Warm up your IP if it’s new

New IP addresses have no history or reputation. Providers treat these IPs with suspicion until they prove to be legitimate senders.

IP warm-up is necessary in these situations:

• When starting with a new IP
• When switching email marketing providers
• If you haven’t sent emails in more than 30 days

To properly warm up your IP, follow this step-by-step process:

Step 1: Start by sending approximately 3000 emails a day
Step 2: Increase volume by 15% daily
Step 3: Prioritize sending to your most active contacts
Step 4: Maintain this process until you reach your usual volume

Following this scheme, on the tenth day you will be sending more than 10,500 emails. Skipping this process can damage your sender reputation, requiring months to recover.

Remember that if you send to Microsoft contacts (Outlook, Live, Hotmail), they are more restrictive and you should not exceed 2,000 emails per day from a cold IP.

Step 4: Keep your contact list clean and up-to-date

Every year you lose about 25% of your subscribers. This figure may put you off, but it represents an opportunity to improve your deliverability. A clean, up-to-date list makes the difference between making it to the main inbox or staying in spam.

Delete inactive or bounced emails

Did you know that providers like Gmail automatically move emails with little interaction to spam? This creates a negative cycle: fewer opens lead to worse deliverability. We recommend that you identify and remove these problematic contacts:

• Contacts without openings in the last 12 months
• Addresses that are constantly bouncing
• Users who marked your email as spam
• Engagementless contacts in your last 10 campaigns

To identify inactive contacts, review properties such as last email opened, last reply, or last click. This cleanup improves your deliverability and provides more accurate reporting on actual performance.

Remember that sending to inactive contacts seriously damages your reputation. An open rate of less than 15% indicates to providers that you’re possibly spamming.

Implement reactivation campaigns

Before you permanently delete your inactive contacts, try to recover them. The ideal time to send a reactivation email is three months after your last interaction. After six months, these campaigns lose effectiveness.

We recommend that you structure your reactivation strategy in progressive phases:

Phase 1: Friendly Reminder

• Offer exclusive incentives such as discounts
• Personalize with name and references to previous purchases
• Use creative subjects such as “Have you disconnected? Come back and enjoy a 20% discount”

Phase 2: Last Resort
Implement a “cleanup” email stating that it will be deleted in 30 days if you do not confirm your interest. This message serves two purposes: it motivates reactivation for fear of losing valuable information and it keeps your list clean.

Avoid spam traps

Spam traps are fake addresses that providers create to detect spammers. Falling into these traps has serious consequences:

• Loss of your sender reputation
• Blocking your IP address
• Blacklisting
• Complete blocking of your domain

“Recycled traps” are the most common: addresses that were real but are already inactive. To avoid them:

• Never buy mailing lists
• Use double opt-in on opt-in forms
• Implement CAPTCHA against malicious bots
• Regularly delete unengaged contacts

Regularly cleaning your list significantly improves your engagement rates and business results. Keeping only valuable contacts is more cost-effective than maintaining an extensive but inactive database.

Step 5: Optimize the content of your emails

Your content determines whether spam filters block your messages before they reach your contacts. You can have the perfect technical setup, but if your content sets off alarms, all the previous work will be useless.

Avoid words and formats that trigger spam filters

Anti-spam systems analyze every word in your emails. Terms such as “free money”, “limited offer” or “risk-free” immediately trigger alerts. We recommend that you avoid these categories of words:

• Exaggerated financial promises
• Manipulative urgency (“last chance!”)
• Unrealistic medical claims
• Deals that sound too good to be true

Remember that formatting matters, too. CAPITALIZING is equivalent to shouting and filters detect it immediately. Multiple exclamation points (OFFER???) are typical of spam. It also avoids URL shorteners, as spammers use them to hide malicious destinations.

Balance text and images

Many companies make the mistake of creating emails that are just a great image. This approach presents two serious problems:

Most email readers block images by default. If your message relies solely on images, recipients will see a blank screen and delete your email without thinking.

Anti-spam filters consider emails with little text and many images to be suspicious. To avoid problems, keep a ratio of approximately 60% text and 40% images.

Always include alt text in your images. This practice improves accessibility and allows recipients to understand your message even when images aren’t loading.

Includes clear calls to action

Calls-to-action (CTAs) guide your readers to the result you’re looking for. To maximize its effectiveness, follow these recommendations:

• Use direct texts with action verbs
• Place the main CTA at the end of the content so that readers can take in the context
• Include calls to action within the first 3/4 of your email, in case some don’t read to the end
• Use the first-person pronoun (“I want my discount” instead of “Get your discount”) to increase clicks by up to 90%

Make sure your buttons are clearly visible on mobile devices. Remember that 85% of users access their emails from smartphones.

Step 6: Improve engagement with your emails

Did you know that your users’ interaction determines whether your next emails will make it to the main inbox? Email providers constantly monitor how recipients respond to your messages. We recommend applying these strategies to increase engagement and improve your deliverability.

Use engaging subject lines

47% of recipients decide to open an email based solely on the subject line. This statistic demonstrates the importance of creating impactful lines that capture immediate attention.

Personalization in the subject significantly increases the chances of opening. Including the recipient’s name using merge tags is effective, but you should use it sparingly to avoid appearing intrusive.

Contrary to what many believe, the word “free” does not necessarily affect the delivery rate. The words “thank you” and “download” significantly increase the click-through rate.

Remember that the most effective subject lines are between 2 and 4 words or up to 70 characters, reaching open rates of 43.38%. Moderate capitalization can slightly improve open rates.

Ask to be added to your contact list

This simple yet powerful strategy dramatically improves your deliverability. When users add you to their contact list, you let providers know that you’re a trusted sender.

You can include this request:

• In your welcome email
• At the end of your signature
• In a brief reminder at the beginning of the message

This tactic works especially well with Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook, which prioritize messages from known contacts in the main inbox.

Segment and personalize your shipments

List segmentation can increase customer lifetime value by up to 33%. Dividing your database into specific groups allows you to submit truly relevant content.

The most effective criteria for segmentation include:

• Demographics: location, language, age
• Behavior: purchase history, pages viewed, products viewed
• Interaction with emails: opens, clicks, frequency of response

Personalization goes far beyond including the recipient’s name. It consists of completely adapting the content according to individual preferences. This includes recommendations based on previous purchases, dynamic content that changes based on the user’s profile, and exclusive offers based on their behavior.

Identify your most engaged subscribers and send them more frequent emails, while implementing reactivation strategies with those less active.

Step 7: Set a consistent sending frequency

How often should you send your emails? This decision can determine whether you maintain a strong relationship with your subscribers or lose them for good. More than 26% of consumers say that receiving communications too often would dissuade them from buying from a brand. However, there is also the opposite problem: 10% of consumers would stop working with a brand if they don’t receive enough communications.

Avoid sudden sending spikes

Sudden increases in sending volume lead to distrust in email providers. Suddenly doubling the number of emails you send on a regular basis can lead to frequency limitations or worsen your domain’s reputation.

To avoid these problems:

• Increase the volume gradually, monitoring the server’s responses
• Adapt your strategy if you spot increases in spam rates
• Reduce volume if messages start to bounce or be deferred
• If you modify the sending format or infrastructure, the volume of emails modified separately increases

Allows users to choose the frequency

Getting email cadence right comes down to respecting your audience’s preferences. Implement a preference center where subscribers can choose how often they want to receive your communications: daily, weekly, or monthly. This strategy significantly decreases unsubscribe and complaint rates.

In addition to improving customer satisfaction, it provides you with valuable insights into their preferences and interests, making it easier to deliver personalized messages. You’ll find that middle ground that optimizes the sales generated by your campaigns without causing fatigue in your subscribers.

Always includes visible unsubscribe option

Making it easier for users to unsubscribe improves your deliverability. From 2024, including a one-click unsubscribe link is a mandatory requirement for senders of bulk mailings to Gmail and Yahoo.

If a subscriber can’t unsubscribe easily, it will take more drastic measures such as marking your email as spam, compromising the deliverability of all your mailings. This behavior can cause you to reach “exponentially more in the spam folder of other users, even if they have not marked your mailings as spam”.

Make sure that the unsubscribe link is text (not image, as it could be blocked) and visible in every message you send.

Improve your deliverability, improve your results

You’ve come this far and you already know the 7 essential steps to improve your email deliverability. Now you have the tools you need to get your messages exactly where they need to be: your contacts’ main inbox.

Implementing these changes is not optional if you want real results in email marketing. A deliverability rate of more than 95% can make the difference between a successful campaign and wasted resources.

Where to start? We recommend starting with the technical configuration: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC have been mandatory since February 2024. Without this solid foundation, other efforts will have limited impact.

Then, clean your contact list. This step is crucial because sending emails to inactive addresses damages your reputation as a sender. Remember that it’s better to have a small, engaged list than a large one full of inactive contacts.

If you need to verify the quality of your email addresses, VerifyEmails can help you automate this process. Our email verification service is 98% accurate and allows you to keep your list clean without manual effort.

For businesses that handle high volumes or need full automation, the email checking API offers direct integration with your systems. This way you can verify addresses in real time before they pollute your database.

Deliverability works as a continuous cycle. The actions you take today will determine your results tomorrow. That’s why it’s critical to implement these steps consistently and constantly monitor your performance.

Start by applying these 7 steps and watch your open and click-through rates improve. Your investment in email marketing will generate better results when your messages actually reach their destination.

If you have any questions about implementing these strategies, our support team will be happy to help.

FAQs

Q1. What is email deliverability and why is it important?
Deliverability is the ability of emails to reach recipients’ inboxes. It’s crucial because it directly affects the success of email marketing campaigns, brand reputation, and business results.

Q2. How can I improve my domain authentication for sending emails?
To improve authentication, properly configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols in your domain’s DNS records. Also, use a custom domain instead of free email services for your email marketing campaigns.

Q3. What should I do to keep my contact list clean and up-to-date?
Regularly delete inactive or bounced emails, implement reactivation campaigns for low-engaged subscribers, and avoid spam traps using practices such as double opt-in and email validation.

Q4. How can I optimize the content of my emails to improve deliverability?
Avoid words and formats that trigger spam filters, maintain a balance between text and images (approximately 60% text and 40% images), and include clear and effective calls to action in your emails.

Q5. What is the importance of establishing a consistent sending frequency?
A consistent sending frequency helps maintain a good relationship with your subscribers and improves deliverability. It prevents sudden sending spikes, allows users to choose the frequency of receiving and always includes a visible unsubscribe option to comply with regulations and maintain a healthy subscriber list.