Improve the deliverability of your email campaigns

Deliverability is your emails' ability to reach your contacts' inbox, rather than the spam folder or nowhere at all. A "sent" email is not necessarily a "delivered" one: mail providers such as Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo filter every message based on the sender's reputation. This guide explains how that reputation is built and what you can actually do so your Upkyo Campaigns emails get read.

How do mail providers decide where your email goes?

Each provider has its own filters, but they all look at the same broad families of signals:

• Identity: is the message authenticated (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and consistent with the sender address?
• Reputation: does this domain usually send wanted email, or does it generate complaints and non-existent addresses?
• Engagement: do recipients open, click and reply, or delete without reading?
• Content: does the message look like spam (dubious links, image-only emails, aggressive wording)?

Engagement carries more and more weight. That is why a small list of attentive readers beats a large file of indifferent contacts.

Improve your deliverability step by step

1. Authenticate your sending domain with SPF and DKIM, see Authenticate your sending domain.
2. Publish a DMARC record on your domain, starting with v=DMARC1; p=none;.
3. Use a sender address on that domain, never a Gmail or Hotmail address.
4. Only import contacts who agreed to receive your emails, see Import your contacts.
5. Regularly remove contacts who have not opened anything for several months.
6. Send at a steady rhythm, with no months of silence followed by a huge send.
7. Send yourself a test before each campaign and check links, images and text.
8. Watch each campaign report: unsubscribes, bounces and clicks.

What Upkyo Campaigns already does for you

Part of the work is automatic:

• an unsubscribe link is added to every email;
• invalid addresses and unsubscribes are removed automatically;
• bounces and complaints are handled;
• a blocklist lets you block addresses you must never contact;
• sending is spread over time to protect your reputation;
• campaigns go out through infrastructure built for bulk email, kept apart from your everyday mail.

The rest depends on your choices: who you contact, what you send and how often.

Why does list quality matter so much?

An address that no longer exists causes a hard bounce. Too many bounces tell mail providers you are writing to strangers. A complaint (the "Report spam" button) hurts even more. Major mail providers recommend keeping the complaint rate very low; above that, your emails get filtered, even for readers who want them.

The sources of bad addresses are well known: purchased lists, business cards collected without consent, very old lists. Grow your list with a signup form on your website, where contacts give their consent themselves.

Take care of your email content

• Balance text and images: an email made of one big image fares badly with filters and is unreadable when images are blocked.
• Trustworthy links: avoid URL shorteners, which spammers use too. A tracking domain in your name makes your links more credible.
• An honest subject line: no misleading "RE:", no all caps, no unrealistic promises.
• A visible unsubscribe link: a reader who cannot find it clicks "spam" instead. Better to lose them cleanly.
• A recognisable sender: the same name and address every time.

What if your emails land in spam?

• First check in Sending domains that your domain is verified.
• Make sure your domain has only one SPF record.
• Look at the unsubscribe and bounce rates of your last campaign: an unusual figure often points to one part of the list.
• Send only to your most active contacts for a few campaigns: good engagement signals gradually restore your reputation.
• Ask your readers to add your address to their contacts.

If a problem persists, open a ticket from /submitticket.php or email support@upkyo.com, giving the name of the campaign concerned.

Frequently asked questions

What is email deliverability?

It is an email's ability to reach its recipient's inbox. It depends on your domain authentication, your sender reputation, your readers' engagement and the content of your messages.

Why do my newsletters go to spam?

The most common causes are an unauthenticated domain, a list containing invalid or non-consenting addresses, complaints and content that looks like spam. Start by checking your sending domain, then clean your list.

Are SPF, DKIM and DMARC mandatory?

For bulk sending, major mail providers now require proper authentication. Without it, your campaigns may be filtered or rejected. Add SPF and DKIM with Authenticate your sending domain, then a DMARC record.

Should I remove inactive contacts?

Yes, regularly. Contacts who have not opened your emails for a long time drag your reputation down. You can first send them one last message asking whether they want to stay subscribed.

Does sending more often hurt deliverability?

Frequency itself is not the problem; an irregular rhythm, or one that tires your readers, is. Stay consistent and watch unsubscribes: if they rise, space out your sends.