A beautiful email only works if it lands in the inbox. Deliverability is the art of getting there, and most of it comes down to a few habits you can start today.
What deliverability is
When your email arrives, mailbox providers such as Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo decide whether it goes to the inbox, a promotions tab or spam. They look at three things:
- Authentication: can they confirm the email really comes from you?
- Reputation: how have people responded to your past email? Spam reports and bounces hurt; opens, clicks and replies help.
- Content and behaviour: does the email look and act like something people asked for?
Authenticate your domain
Three DNS records prove to mailbox providers that you’re allowed to send from your domain:
- SPF lists the servers allowed to send email for your domain.
- DKIM adds a digital signature showing the email came from your domain and wasn’t changed on the way.
- DMARC ties SPF and DKIM to the address in your From line, and tells providers what to do with email that fails.
Gmail and Yahoo require all three from bulk senders, along with a one-click unsubscribe. In BumbleBlast, our team sets your sending domain up with these records before you send live campaigns, and every campaign supports one-click unsubscribe automatically.
Send from an address at your business domain, like jane@yourbusiness.com, rather than a free address such as Gmail or Yahoo. Free email providers don’t allow other services to send on their behalf, so those emails tend to fail authentication.
Send to people who want it
- Only email people who agreed to hear from you. It’s the law in Canada, and it’s the single biggest factor in your reputation everywhere.
- Never buy, rent or scrape a list. Those addresses bounce, report spam and sometimes include “spam traps” that mark you as a spammer.
- Re-confirm old lists. If you haven’t emailed a group in a long time, send a short “do you still want to hear from me?” email first, and keep only the people who respond.
- Make leaving easy. An unsubscribe is far better for you than a spam report, so never hide the link.
Watch bounces and complaints
Two numbers matter most:
- Bounce rate: the share of emails that couldn’t be delivered, usually because an address doesn’t exist. A high bounce rate suggests an old or poorly collected list.
- Spam complaint rate: the share of recipients who clicked “Report spam”. Google asks senders to keep this below 0.1% and never reach 0.3%.
You can see both for the last 30 days under Reports → Deliverability. To protect your reputation, BumbleBlast pauses sending automatically if bounces reach 4% or spam reports reach 0.08% (once you’ve sent at least 200 emails in that period), and our team reviews it with you before sending resumes.
Content and habits
- Use a From name people recognise, such as your own name or your business’s name, and keep it consistent.
- Write honest subject lines. Misleading ones lead to spam reports, and in the US they’re against the law.
- Balance images and text. An email that is one big image, with little text, looks suspicious and doesn’t display when images are turned off. Add descriptive alt text to images.
- Link to your own website, and avoid public link shorteners, which spammers often use.
- Send on a steady rhythm. A sudden burst to thousands of people who haven’t heard from you in months is a red flag; regular, expected email builds trust.
- Test first. Send yourself a test and check it on a phone and a computer before every campaign.
What BumbleBlast does for you
- Sends through Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), from your own verified domain.
- Adds a compliance footer with your business details and an unsubscribe link to every campaign.
- Supports one-click unsubscribe, and honours every unsubscribe immediately.
- Suppresses addresses that bounce or report spam, so they’re never emailed again.
- Pauses sending automatically if bounce or complaint rates climb too high.
- Requires every import to confirm the list wasn’t bought or scraped.