Assess email risk before delivery is more than vanity metrics (opens, clicks) – it determines whether your audience actually sees your emails. With mailbox providers tightening regulations on bulk email senders, good deliverability is more important than ever. The best way to ensure your emails reach your audience’s inboxes is by implementing email authentication, having an unsubscribe link, and using real-time verification on signup forms to eliminate invalid or disposable emails. In addition, you need to monitor engagement over time and make adjustments as needed. For example, a drop in open and click rates could signal the need for list hygiene or a negative engagement score may result in your emails being blocked by a mail provider.

Assessing Email Risk Before Delivery

Other key factors that impact deliverability include spam filter analysis, inbox placement simulation, and your current reputation with major ISPs. Spam filter analysis evaluates the content of your emails (subject lines, links, HTML structure, image-to-text ratio) against spam filters’ rules and algorithms. It also examines your IP address and reverse DNS configuration, and blacklist presence.

A high spam complaint rate can damage your sender reputation, resulting in poor deliverability. It’s important to keep your spam complaint rate below 0.1%. Inbox placement simulation tests your emails against a diverse network of ISPs to see where they land (primary inbox, promotions tab, spam folder) and helps you understand what types of content and messaging will trigger or avoid spam filters. In addition, ICES solutions can utilize natural language processing and machine learning to create a behavioral baseline for each employee, making it easy to identify deviations that might indicate a phishing or social engineering attempt.