Your deliverability questions, answered (part 1)

When it comes to email deliverability, few people know the inbox as well as Al Iverson.

He helps people maximize deliverability success and also runs the incredibly informative Spam Resource blog — a must-read that has saved me from a deliverability jam or two.

Over the past few weeks, our readers submitted their questions about email deliverability for an “Ask Me Anything” conversation with Iverson.

Questions covered list warming, reputation monitoring, domain rehab, and safe sending, amongst others.

Below are a few of Iverson’s unedited responses — no fluff, just real deliverability wisdom.

We’re breaking up his answers in two parts — with another round of questions and answers coming to your inbox next Thursday!

Q: How can I clean or “warm” my list without losing too many supporters?

Al Iverson: Simple — by periodically sending them engaging content and making sure you have a relationship with them beyond just fundraising.

Don’t only come to them with your hand out; make sure your emails are valuable or interesting to them.

Useful tips related to your area of focus, or relevant requests for feedback (encourage subscribers to reply with their thoughts), are both good ways to help warm your list and build up your good sending reputation — without losing too many subscribers.

Q: Is there a way to monitor my sender reputation without expensive tools?

AI: Inbox placement testing tools can indeed get expensive. If you can’t afford one of the common tools like Validity’s Everest, GLockApps, or Inbox Monster, you can create and simply manage your own deliverability test addresses.

Create test email accounts on the mailbox provider platforms that show up the most on your list. For most folks in the US, that’s going to be Google’s Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft’s Outlook.com.

Go create accounts, and add those addresses to your mailing list. Include them in your regular sends.

Now you have a place where you can log in and see: Did the mail go to the inbox, or to the spam folder, or was it never delivered at all?

Be careful not to click “this is spam” or “this is not spam” for your own mail; at a very tiny level, you’re not likely to get into trouble for false reporting, but you don’t want to accidentally customize your own filters based on your feedback.

You want to be able to see how the spam filters treat your mail when you DON’T provide feedback.

That gives you a better chance of understanding how your mail is likely being handled across those different mailbox providers’ broad user base.

In addition to this, look at the stats provided by your email sending platform, in particular, open rates.

“Open” tracking is tricky and can be inaccurate, because it is based on image loading, and mailbox providers do various things to cache and obfuscate loading times or image handling because of privacy concerns.

Look for steep drops in open rates, especially at a single domain. That’s often an indicator of a spam folder problem.

Finally, be sure to register your email domain for Google Postmaster Tools (GPT), ensure you’ve configured DKIM authentication for email sending as your own domain, and use a free online tester like aboutmy.email to ensure technical compliance with the various mailbox provider sender requirements.

Q: Any subject line tactics that are especially risky from a deliverability perspective?

AI: You should care about spammy words and subject lines, but not because of them triggering filters.

As my good friend Lauren Meyer pointed out recently, it’s really more about what kind of feeling they may evoke from your email recipients.

Goad them, trick them, mislead them, and you’re on a bad footing and likely to run into problems with spam complaints (high) and engagement (low).

Spam filters, for the most part, except for oddities and misfires, do not usually trigger based on single words in the subject line.

It’ll happen, but it’ll be odd, and there’s not much you can do about it.

The bottom line
Iverson’s advice boils down to this: deliverability isn’t about hacks — it’s about sending wanted email, to people who actually want it, in ways that build trust over time.

Keep your content engaging, your data clean, and your eyes on the signals that matter most.

And that’s just part one — the next round of AMA answers lands in your inbox next Thursday. Stay tuned!

Check our events list for more or reply to this email to submit one for consideration.

'Til next time!
Sara

P.S. Looking to add donors to your email list before year-end comes knocking? See how Civic Shout can help.