What actions should I take based on poor inbox placement results?

Your inbox placement test just came back with bad news. A chunk of emails landed in spam, or worse, went missing entirely. Now what?

The first thing to understand is that poor placement rarely has a single cause. It's usually two or three things stacking on top of each other. So instead of randomly poking around, work through this in order.

1. Check authentication first

This is always step one. If SPF, DKIM, or DMARC aren't passing and aligning, mailbox providers have no reason to trust you. A misconfigured record is a fast path to the spam folder. You can verify your SPF in 30 seconds with our free SPF checker, or run your DKIM through our DKIM record lookup.

2. Look at postmaster tools

Gmail Postmaster Tools shows your domain reputation, IP reputation, and spam rate over time. If your spam rate is trending above 0.1%, that's a signal Gmail is already watching you closely. Microsoft 365 SNDS gives you similar data for Outlook and Hotmail addresses. Both are free and both are worth checking before you do anything else.

3. Find out if the problem is universal or provider-specific

This is the question that shapes everything else. If Gmail is filtering you but Outlook isn't, the problem is likely domain reputation or content-related. If every provider is filtering you, you're probably looking at a more fundamental authentication or sending infrastructure issue. Go back to your test results and break them down by provider before drawing any conclusions.

4. Review your content

Scan for spam trigger words, broken links, redirect chains, or any URL that points to a flagged domain. If you recently changed your template, your subject line style, or your call-to-action copy, compare the new version against what was working before. Sometimes a single link to a third-party site with a bad reputation is enough to drag your email down.

5. Separate your engaged and unengaged segments

Run a separate test on engaged subscribers only. If placement improves significantly when you strip out people who haven't opened in six months, your list health is the culprit, not your content or authentication. Sending to a cold, unengaged list drags your reputation down across the board.

6. Change one variable at a time

So this is where a lot of senders go wrong. They fix three things at once and then don't know which fix actually worked (or if all three were necessary). Change one thing, retest, compare. It takes longer but you'll understand your own deliverability much better because of it.

If you're stuck and the results still don't make sense after working through all of this, our SOS hotline is free. No pitch, just a real conversation about what's going on with your sending.