What is an email deliverability audit?

A deliverability audit is a structured review of everything that affects whether your emails reach the inbox. It's equal parts technical check, data pull, and pattern-spotting. Done right, it surfaces the two or three things that are actually hurting you, not a 40-item checklist of trivia.

The five areas a real audit covers

Authentication. Is SPF valid, is DKIM signing every message, does DMARC align, and what's the policy? This is the 20-minute check that catches the most common show-stoppers.

Reputation. Pull Google Postmaster Tools and Microsoft SNDS for the last 30 days. Look at domain reputation, IP reputation, and spam rate trend. If you haven't set these up, that's step zero.

List quality. Where do new subscribers come from? When was the list last validated? What's your bounce rate and complaint rate by acquisition source? A single bad source can drag the whole list down.

Content and infrastructure. Are you using a dedicated sending domain, or mixing transactional and marketing? Are your links on clean domains? Is your unsubscribe link above the fold and one-click?

Engagement patterns. Open rate, click rate, and reply rate by segment and recency. Inactive subscribers older than 12 months without engagement are usually the biggest hidden drag on inbox placement.

DIY or hire someone?

Do it yourself if: your list is under 100K, you're using a standard ESP (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, HubSpot), and you have a few hours. The authentication check plus postmaster tools setup will catch 70% of issues.

Hire someone if: you're sending over 500K/month, you've done the basics and still have placement issues, or you have custom infrastructure (self-hosted MTA, multiple domains, international sends). External eyes catch patterns internal teams miss because you're too close to the data.

Starting points

Our free DMARC analyzer covers area one in about three minutes. For the full walkthrough with a human, the SOS hotline is how most people start. Why not try us ;)