How to Check Email Deliverability in 2025: Complete Testing Guide

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Ever wonder why your emails seem to disappear into thin air? Poor email deliverability affects countless businesses, with emails getting caught in spam folders or blocked entirely due to authentication issues, content problems, or reputation concerns.

An email deliverability check is testing whether your emails successfully reach recipients’ inboxes rather than spam folders. Here’s how to monitor and improve your deliverability performance.

Why It Matters

If your emails don’t reach inboxes, your open rates plummet, engagement drops, and revenue suffers. Poor deliverability creates a downward spiral; the more emails marked as spam, the harder it becomes for future emails to reach inboxes.

Essential Deliverability Checks

1. Verify Your Authentication

Set up DKIM and DMARC records properly. These protocols tell email providers you’re legitimate. You can set up DKIM and DMARC with just a few clicks using the automated domain connection feature.

Learn more about email authentication with DKIM to supercharge performance.

2. Clean Your Content

Avoid spam triggers:

  • Only send subscribers content that directly relates to what they signed up for whether that’s product updates, service information, tips and tricks, or other specific topics they chose. Avoid sending unexpected content or loosely related material you think might interest them, as this can trigger spam complaints and cause your emails to be filtered or blocked.

  • Excessive capitalization or exclamation points

  • Spam trigger words

  • Too many images vs. text in your messages (a ratio of 80/20 for text to images or 60/40 for text to images is a good standard)

  • Broken or suspicious links

You can use A/B testing tools to optimize subject lines and the Newsletter Assistant to create industry focused content.

3. Monitor Key Metrics

Track these critical numbers in your analytics:

4. Maintain List Hygiene

Regular Monitoring Tips

Before sending: Preview emails across devices and test send times based on your analytics.

After sending: Check for sudden drops in open rates or increases in bounces; these signal deliverability issues.

Monthly: Review key email metrics and clean your list of unengaged subscribers.

Best Practices Summary

  1. Use custom domain authentication (never send from Gmail/Yahoo)

  2. Monitor engagement rates regularly

  3. Remove inactive subscribers quarterly

  4. Follow permission-based marketing only

  5. Test and optimize content continuously

Quick Action Steps

:white_check_mark: Check your DKIM/DMARC setup in Account Settings > Domains & Addresses
:white_check_mark: Review last month’s bounce and open rates
:white_check_mark: Clean your list of subscribers who haven’t engaged in 90+ days
:white_check_mark: Keep an eye on your stats to catch problems early

Following these deliverability best practices will help ensure your emails consistently reach subscribers’ inboxes and maximize your email marketing ROI.

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I want to emphasize the critical point about sending subscribers content that directly relates to what they signed up for. This cannot be overstated. When people receive unexpected content, they’re far more likely to mark emails as spam, unsubscribe, or ignore future messages, all of which signal to email providers that the content isn’t wanted and damages sender reputation. The advice to avoid “loosely related material you think might interest them” is spot-on. Subscribers gave you permission for something specific, not permission to guess what else they might want. This fundamental principle helps drives all the deliverability metrics we care about.

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