Email Deliverability Check

The Problem

Open rates have dropped, clients say they never got your email, or you just want to know where you stand before a big campaign — and "deliverability" is really five or six separate things that each need checking individually.

About this problem

"Deliverability" isn't one thing — it's the combined result of authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC), sender reputation (IP and domain history, blacklist status), and sometimes content (spam-trigger patterns), and a drop in open rates could be caused by any one of them or a combination.

This gets requested most often after a noticeable drop in email engagement, before a significant campaign where deliverability really matters, or when a business just wants a baseline understanding of where they stand.

What's Included

• Checking SPF, DKIM and DMARC alignment
• Blacklist checks across the major RBLs
• Reviewing sending IP/domain reputation signals
• A prioritised list of what's actually hurting your deliverability, in order of impact

What's NOT Included

• Fixing every issue found (quoted separately once we know what's wrong)
• Content/spam-trigger-word analysis of your email templates
• Ongoing reputation monitoring

How It Works

1. Check SPF, DKIM and DMARC are all correctly configured and aligned with each other.
2. Run the sending IP and domain against the major real-time blacklists (RBLs).
3. Review sender reputation signals available through mailbox provider postmaster tools where accessible.
4. Check for obvious content-level red flags in recent campaigns if samples are provided.
5. Rank every finding by actual impact on deliverability, not just by how easy each is to fix.

In practice: you buy the service, send over whatever access or details the job needs, I investigate and do the work, and you confirm it's resolved before we call it done.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my open rate suddenly dropping?

It's almost always one of: a new authentication failure, a blacklist listing, declining sender reputation, or a change in recipient engagement that mailbox providers interpret negatively — a deliverability check narrows down which.

Can a deliverability check tell me exactly why emails go to spam?

It identifies the most likely contributing factors ranked by impact, since spam filtering combines multiple signals and no single check can guarantee the one exact cause.

Does this check fix the problems it finds?

No, it diagnoses and prioritises them — fixing issues like broken authentication or a blacklist listing is quoted and done separately once the scope is known.

How is this different from just checking SPF/DKIM/DMARC?

Authentication is one major piece of deliverability, but reputation and content matter too — this check covers all the angles rather than just the DNS side.

Do I need to provide sample emails for this check?

It helps for the content-level review, but the authentication and reputation checks can be done without them.

How often should I run a deliverability check?

Before any major campaign, after a noticeable drop in engagement, or roughly annually as a health check if email is business-critical.