Key concepts

These are the core terms you’ll encounter throughout InboxEagle. Understanding them will help you read your dashboard data with confidence and take the right action when something looks off.

Deliverability

Deliverability is the measure of whether your emails reach the inbox (or promotions tab) instead of spam. InboxEagle surfaces metrics such as:

• Inbox rate — Share of messages landing in the primary inbox.
• Promotions rate — Share landing in the promotions tab (e.g. Gmail).
• Spam rate — Share landing in spam or being blocked.

Deliverability is shaped by domain authentication, sender reputation, and content. InboxEagle shows you where you stand per sending domain and IP — so you know what’s working and what to fix.

Tip

The promotions tab is not spam. For commercial senders, Gmail promotions placement is a deliverability success — your mail reached the inbox folder group and subscribers can find it.

Sending domain

A sending domain is the domain in your email’s “From” address (e.g. mail.example.com). InboxEagle shows per–sending-domain data such as:

• Authentication status (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
• Inbox, promotions, and spam placement.
• Volume and trends over time.

A properly authenticated sending domain protects your domain reputation and improves inbox placement rates.

Note

Your sending domain is often a subdomain of your main domain (e.g. mail.example.com, not example.com). Authentication records must be set on the sending domain, not the root domain, unless you send from the root directly.

Inbox placement

Inbox placement is the outcome for a given message: inbox, promotions, or spam. InboxEagle breaks down placement by provider (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL) and over time, so you can spot issues and measure the impact of authentication changes, IP switches, or campaign adjustments.

Tip

Use the time-range filter to compare placement before and after a change. Placement changes rarely happen instantly — look for trends over days, not hours.

Google Postmaster Tools

Google Postmaster Tools is Google’s free service for bulk senders. When you connect it to InboxEagle, you can see:

• Domain and IP reputation scores.
• Traffic and encryption stats.
• User-reported spam ratio and delivery errors.

You connect it directly from the InboxEagle app via Integrations → Google Postmaster Tools; your Postmaster data then appears in the deliverability dashboard and related views.

Bot Finder and engagement quality

Store Owner

When you send emails, some “opens” are not real — Apple Mail, Gmail, and corporate security tools automatically load your tracking pixels before a human ever reads the message. This inflates your open rates by 20–40%. Bot Finder filters these automated events out so you see your true engagement rate and can make better decisions about who to suppress or re-engage.

Technical

Bot Finder classifies every SES, Mailgun, and Klaviyo engagement event using a 6-layer pipeline: timing analysis, IP intelligence, user agent fingerprinting, cross-tenant reputation aggregation, per-recipient history, and honeypot signals. Events are scored 0–100 and classified as Human (0–24), Suspicious (25–39), or Bot (40–100).

Caution

Bot-inflated engagement is a hidden risk. Without filtering, open rates of 40–60% on SES are common — but the real human rate may be half that. Making suppression, re-engagement, or content decisions on inflated data degrades list quality and, over time, hurts deliverability.

See Integrations: Bot Finder for setup details.

Yahoo Sender Hub

Yahoo Sender Hub (sender.yahoo.com) is Yahoo’s postmaster tool for bulk senders — the Yahoo and AOL equivalent of Google Postmaster Tools. It provides direct visibility into complaint rates and risk zone status at Yahoo and AOL. When connected to InboxEagle, you get alerts when your complaint rate approaches Yahoo’s 0.10% warning threshold.

Connect it from Integrations → Yahoo Sender Hub. See Yahoo Sender Hub integration for setup steps.

DMARC monitoring

DMARC protects your sending domain from spoofing and unauthorised use. DMARC monitoring is the ongoing process of reviewing who is sending email on your domain’s behalf and whether that mail is passing authentication — distinct from the one-time task of setting up your DMARC DNS record.

InboxEagle parses your DMARC aggregate reports automatically and surfaces:

• Unauthorized senders — Third parties sending mail claiming your domain
• Alignment failures — Sources where SPF or DKIM passes but domain alignment fails
• Policy enforcement — Percentage of mail covered by your current DMARC policy

See DMARC monitoring for the full dashboard guide.

Inbox placement testing (seed list)

Inbox placement testing lets you check where your email lands — inbox, promotions, or spam — at Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and 20+ other providers before or after a send. Results return in under 5 minutes.

InboxEagle maintains a panel of real seed mailboxes. You send your campaign to the seed addresses using your normal sending infrastructure, and InboxEagle reports back placement per provider.

This is different from ongoing placement monitoring, which tracks trends from real subscriber sends. Use seed testing for on-demand, pre-send validation. See Inbox placement testing.

Blocklist detection

An email blocklist (DNSBL) is a database of IP addresses or domains known to send spam. Mailbox providers and enterprise mail filters check these databases during delivery — a listing causes your mail to be rejected or filtered, often silently.

InboxEagle monitors your sending IPs and domains against major blocklists in real time and alerts you the moment a listing is detected. See Blocklist detection.

Cost optimization

Most ESPs charge per contact or per email sent. Unengaged contacts — those who have not genuinely opened or clicked in months — inflate your costs without generating revenue and drag down your engagement rates, which hurts deliverability.

InboxEagle’s cost optimization tool uses Bot Finder engagement data (confirmed human opens, not bot opens) and Klaviyo send history to identify contacts that are safe to suppress. Average programs see a 40% cost reduction. See Cost optimization.

Competitive intelligence

InboxEagle can track competitor brands’ sending domains and show you how their inbox placement rates compare to yours. This lets you benchmark against industry peers and identify whether placement gaps are a you-specific problem or an industry-wide trend.

See Competitive intelligence for how to add competitor brands.