After working with dozens of clients and facing every type of deliverability crisis imaginable, this visual hits home for me. Email deliverability isn’t just one metric or a checkbox, it’s a complex system of moving parts. What this diagram perfectly highlights is that it’s not enough to just “warm up your IP” or “check your SPF record”, although yes, those matter too.
What I keep seeing, over and over again, is that clients often treat deliverability like a tech-only problem, when in reality, it’s part technical, part content, part behavioural, and part reputation based. Let me break down a few things that stand out from the graph and echo what I deal with day to day.
🔧 Technical Setup – Where Most Senders Start (But Shouldn’t Stop)
Everyone talks about SPF, DKIM, DMARC and they should, but this goes deeper. MTA configurations, queue management, bounce handling, DNS, ..… If your infrastructure isn’t stable or properly aligned, no amount of pretty content will save you.
📬 List Management – The Hidden Killer
One of the most common issues I’ve seen lately? Old, stale, or purchased lists. You can have the best email design in the world, but if you’re sending to role-based or recycled spam trap addresses, your domain’s reputation is toast. Things like double opt-in, list hygiene, sign up clear practises and a sunset policy for inactive users are not optional anymore – they’re essential.
📈 Monitoring & Testing – What You Don’t Measure Will Hurt You
We constantly remind clients to check inbox placement, monitor blacklists, and track DMARC reports – not just open rates. And yet, many senders fly blind. I love how this diagram brings real-time analytics and rendering tests into the picture. These tools help you catch issues before they become a problem.
💡 Content – Still the King (or Queen)
It surprises me how many marketers still ignore spam trigger words, poor text-to-image ratios, or broken links. One campaign we recently audited had 5 different domains in its links – all with shady histories. That alone triggered major spam filtering.
👤 Engagement & Behaviour – Where Gmail & Microsoft Are Looking
Want to know what Google cares about? Replies, clicks, inactivity, user-level signals. Gmail doesn’t prioritise your email if you passed DMARC if no one interacts with your emails. We often encourage our clients to segment users based on behaviour and gradually build their trust again.
🛡️ ISP & Reputation Monitoring — The Underused Power Tool
So many senders forget about Postmaster Tools, SNDS, or third-party reputation dashboards like Cisco Talos, SpamCop reports, Abusix ….. These tools are your early warning system. If your IPs or domains are tanking in reputation, you can’t fix it with content tweaks alone – you need to act strategically.
What this diagram makes clear – and what I always try to communicate – is that email deliverability is a living ecosystem. It’s technical. It’s strategic. It’s behavioral. And it needs ongoing attention.
If you’re treating it as a “set it and forget it,” you’re probably already in trouble.