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Improve inbox placement

Inbox placement — whether your mail lands in inbox, promotions, or spam — is the outcome of authentication, reputation, engagement, and content signals. This guide walks through the most impactful levers.

  1. Audit your authentication records

    Authentication failures (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) are the most common cause of spam placement. Go to Deliverability and open your brand. Check:

    • SPF — Is it passing? Does your sending IP match the SPF record?
    • DKIM — Is the signature present and valid?
    • DMARC — Is a policy set? Is alignment passing?

    If any record is failing or absent, follow Authenticate your sending domain to fix it.

  2. Check your IP reputation and blocklist status

    A shared or new IP with a poor history will drag your placement down regardless of content or authentication. Use IP address analysis to:

    • Look up the reputation of your sending IP(s).
    • Check if the IP is on any major blocklists.
    • See what other domains are sending from the same IP (shared IPs only).

    Also check Blocklist detection — an active blocklist listing will override reputation signals and cause delivery failures regardless of list hygiene. A listing at Spamhaus or Barracuda can explain sudden, provider-wide delivery failures that do not correlate with any content or authentication change.

  3. Use Google Postmaster domain reputation

    Google Postmaster’s domain reputation signal is one of the most direct indicators of how Gmail sees your domain. Connect Google Postmaster and look for:

    • HIGH — Good standing. Maintain your practices.
    • MEDIUM — Some risk. Review authentication and engagement.
    • LOW or BAD — Deliverability is likely impacted. Take immediate action on authentication and list hygiene.

  4. Filter bot engagement with Bot Finder

    If you use Amazon SES, unfiltered bot opens and clicks can make low-engagement segments appear healthy — causing you to keep sending to people who haven’t actually engaged. This hurts reputation over time.

    Enable Bot Finder to:

    • Strip bot opens and clicks from your engagement counts.
    • See real subscriber engagement rates.
    • Make suppression and re-engagement decisions on accurate data.

  5. Review send history trends

    Open your brand’s deliverability view and look at the send history chart. Look for:

    • Sudden drops in inbox rate — often correlate with a problematic campaign, authentication change, or IP issue.
    • Growing spam rate — may indicate list hygiene issues or content triggering filters.
    • Volume spikes — rapid volume increases on new IPs or domains can trigger spam filters.

    Use the time-range filter to compare periods before and after any changes.

  6. Run a pre-send placement test

    Before a high-volume or high-stakes campaign, use Inbox Placement Testing to validate placement proactively. Send your campaign to InboxEagle’s seed list and see results across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and 20+ providers within 5 minutes — before your real subscribers receive it.

Provider-specific notes

Section titled “Provider-specific notes”

Gmail uses both IP and domain reputation. Key factors:

  • Domain reputation is the primary signal (visible in Google Postmaster).
  • DMARC alignment is required for spam rate data in Postmaster.
  • High user-reported spam rates (above 0.10%) will hurt placement significantly.
  • Gmail’s promotions tab is not spam — it’s a deliverability success for commercial senders.

Maintain spam rates well below 0.10% and keep DMARC aligned to protect Gmail placement.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”