Today, unsolicited emails are a common problem. Businesses can use email as a resource to generate leads, revenue, and reach their audience. However, as spam detection has advanced, it has become increasingly challenging for businesses to enhance email deliverability and effectively reach their target audience with targeted offers and promotions.

Most business marketers do not realize how much time they spend writing and sending messages no one reads. Junk email has gradually been relegated to the history of email marketing. So, it’s been challenging to send a large number of emails to the audience. However, people use shared or normal hosting to send mass emails, but they are unaware that these hosting services are primarily categorized as spam since they originate from a single IP address. 

But not to worry, our email hosting is the best solution for business/enterprise email solutions. To avoid such issues, we care about network IP reputation checks. We regularly check blocked IP addresses across all major email providers to ensure that emails reach the inboxes of their intended recipients. Let’s explore how to improve email deliverability and keep your emails out of the spam folder. Several things can cause your email to end up in the spam folder, but there are tips you can follow to avoid emails being marked as spam:

Why You Struggle to Improve Email Deliverability

Even if you’re sending legitimate content to real users, your emails can still end up in the spam folder. Understanding the key reasons behind poor deliverability is the first step to fixing it. Understanding the core reasons behind poor email performance helps you boost deliverability and ensure your emails reach the inbox.

How Shared Hosting Hurts Your Email Deliverability

If you’re using shared or standard hosting for sending emails, you’re likely sharing an IP address with many other websites. If even one of those sites engages in spammy behavior, it can damage the entire server’s reputation, which in turn affects your deliverability. Major email providers may flag or block messages sent from such IPs automatically.

How List Hygiene Can Improve Email Deliverability

Sending emails to outdated, purchased, or unengaged lists results in high bounce rates, low open rates, and potential spam complaints. Internet service providers (ISPs) monitor these metrics, and poor engagement signals that your emails may be unwanted, pushing them to the junk folder. A clean, active list is more important than a large one.

Missing SPF, DKIM, or DMARC? Your Email Deliverability Suffers

Without proper authentication, your emails look suspicious to receiving servers.

• SPF verifies that your domain is allowed to send emails from a particular server.
• DKIM ensures the email hasn’t been tampered with during transit.
• DMARC sets rules for how to handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks.

Missing these records can ruin your ability to improve email deliverability, often causing your emails to be flagged or rejected.

Spammy Email Content Kills Deliverability: Here’s How to Fix It

Email content plays a major role in whether it gets delivered. Overuse of capital letters, excessive exclamation points, spam trigger words (like “free,” “guaranteed,” or “act now”), and a lack of plain-text versions all raise red flags. Inconsistent formatting and broken links also hurt your credibility with spam filters.

Blacklists Destroy Email Deliverability: Check Your IP & Domain

If your domain or mail server IP has been flagged or blacklisted due to spam-like behavior, your emails may never reach the inbox. Blacklists are databases that email providers consult to block known sources of spam. It’s essential to regularly check your domain and IP reputation and take immediate steps to delist if necessary.

Authenticate Your Emails for Deliverability

What is SPF?

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a standard email authentication method that helps prevent spoofing and phishing by verifying the domain name from which email messages are sent. SPF uses a DNS TXT record in the DNS zone file to specify the servers that are allowed to send email on behalf of a domain. This limits the number of servers that can send email and makes it easier for ISPs to identify email from spoofers, scammers, and phishers. By using SPF, organizations can protect their domain from email forgery and phishing attempts. It is recommended to use SPF in combination with other email authentication methods like DKIM and DMARC for ultimate email security.

A typical SPF record looks like v=spf1 ip4:1.2.3.4 ip4:2.3.4.5

How DKIM works?

DKIM plays a critical role in securing email communication, working alongside SPF to provide more effective protection to avoid spam and phishing attempts. DKIM is an email authentication protocol that uses digital signatures to verify the authenticity of an email message. This helps to prevent email spoofing, which is a common tactic used by cybercriminals. DKIM inserts code in the email header, which is encrypted using the sender’s private key.

When the recipient’s email server receives the email, it checks the signature against the sender’s public key. If the signatures match, it confirms that the email is legitimate and has not been altered during transit. DKIM works in conjunction with SPF to ensure that only the authorized email servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of a domain. Together, these protocols provide an added layer of security to email communication, helping to prevent email-based attacks and ensuring that legitimate emails are not mistakenly marked as spam. By implementing measures such as DKIM, organizations can improve email deliverability and reduce the risks of phishing and spam complaints.

What does DMARC add more?

DMARC builds upon the authentication protocols of SPF and DKIM to provide additional protection against email spoofing and phishing attacks. With DMARC, organizations can indicate that their messages are protected by one or both of these authentication protocols while providing explicit instructions to receiving mail systems. This helps prevent hackers and attackers from spoofing an organization’s domain and ensures that emails are delivered to the proper inbox. Moreover, DMARC allows organizations to track important metrics such as blacklisting and spam traps, giving them greater visibility into the effectiveness of their email handling policies. By combining SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, organizations can enhance their email security and reduce the risk of fraudulent activity.

Best Practices to Improve Email Deliverability

Maintain List Hygiene to Improve Email Engagement & Deliverability

Sending emails to outdated, purchased, or unengaged lists can significantly hurt email deliverability and reduce inbox placement rates. Internet service providers (ISPs) monitor these metrics, and poor engagement signals that your emails may be unwanted, pushing them to the junk folder. A clean, active list is more important than a large one.

Regularly keep your email list clean

Do not add a bunch of email addresses that you don’t know where they came from to your more current lists. This may cause your bounce rate to increase and may result in complaints from people who opted out of your email long ago or are no longer interested in your product or service. 

You may lose some subscribers, while others will ignore or mark your emails as spam. In this case, your sending reputation suffers, making it less likely that your emails will reach recipients, including those who actively engage with them. Having a smaller, more engaged email list is always better than having a large list of unengaged users.

So, keep your email list clean regularly. The most effective way to clean your list is to remove unengaged users, bounced emails, and other spam traps.

Improve Email Content and Best Practices for Better Deliverability

To improve email deliverability, successful email marketing requires sending relevant, interesting content to your recipients. In other words, be purposeful about what you send and avoid sending simply to send. 

Aimless sending can cause your engagement to suffer, and that’s the last thing we want. Sending an email that doesn’t resonate with your recipients can lead to the email being ignored and marked as spam. 

If you are unsure what email content works best for your brand, feel free to experiment with new copy styles as you get to know your recipients better. But not to send random emails every day, every hour, which is too irritating.

Additionally, reviewing your email list regularly is essential to ensure that your subscribers opted in and want to receive your content. Dealing with complaints promptly and efficiently is key to maintaining a good sender reputation and avoiding the negative consequences of being blacklisted. Therefore, it is essential to monitor email complaints and make necessary adjustments to avoid getting flagged as a spammer.

Use Spam Testing Tools to Boost Email Deliverability

You can check your emails for spam using spam checkers, which are online tools that examine your email and determine whether it will be marked as spam. To check your emails and avoid spam, there are some spam checkers you can use: 

• Mail Tester
• Litmus 
• IsNotSpam.com
• Postmark

Spam checkers ensure your emails pass all major spam filters before sending them. These tools check blacklists, DKIM, and email structure, helping you improve email deliverability before sending campaigns.

Check IP & Domain Blacklists to Protect Deliverability

Check your mail server periodically to ensure it isn’t blacklisted. A number of tools are available online for this purpose, for example. Please contact YohoCloud support if your server is blacklisted so they can provide instructions. 

For example, if your domain has been involved in spam activity in the past, it may also be blacklisted in rare cases. Check whether the domain is blacklisted by using the blacklist checking tool. Since the domain is the responsibility of the customer, if it is already listed, you will have to delist it manually.

Some tools you can use:

• MXToolbox
• Zerobounce Blacklist checker

Checking your domain or IP reputation regularly is one of the easiest ways to boost email deliverability and sender trust.

Secure Email Servers to Improve Deliverability & Avoid Flags

SSL certificate: mail servers can use SSL well as SMTP authentication. On most web hosting packages, these settings are automatically set and are required. If you don’t know how to use these settings, you can check out how to install SSL on the cPanel blog.

Shared Hosting Cons: If you’re using shared or standard hosting for sending emails, you’re likely sharing an IP address with many other websites. If even one of those sites engages in spammy behavior, it can damage the entire server’s reputation, affecting your deliverability. Major email providers may flag or block messages sent from such IPs automatically. You can switch to Yoho Cloud’s email hosting plans that ensure high email deliverability.

Keep WordPress Secure to Protect Your Email Reputation

Outdated plugins or malware can lead to your site being used for spam, which hurts email deliverability.

• Update WordPress plugins regularly to close security gaps.
• Use malware scanners like Wordfence or Sucuri to detect and block threats.

A secure site helps keep your domain and emails trusted.

Bonus: Legal & Compliance Considerations

Email delivery will not be guaranteed by compliance, but some ISP roadblocks can be bypassed. Marketers and senders should be aware of CAN-SPAM, the Canada Anti-Spam Law (CASL), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA). These laws govern commercial emails, so let’s examine what each requires of senders.

For example: Sending most mails in European countries and across international boundaries require business to:

• Providing clear opt-out options
• Keeping a record of consent
• Avoiding deceptive subject lines

Conclusion: Improving Email Deliverability Is a Strategic Priority

Getting your emails into the inbox isn’t luck, it’s strategy. You need the right techniques to improve email deliverability consistently. By following best practices and maintaining a solid technical foundation, you can drastically improve email deliverability.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Authenticate your emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to prove legitimacy and improve inbox placement.
• Maintain a healthy, engaged list, regularly remove inactive, bounced, or suspicious addresses.
• Craft relevant, high-quality content and avoid spam formats or trigger words.
• Monitor your domain and server reputation, and use spam testing tools like Mail Tester or Litmus before sending campaigns.
• Secure your domain and email servers with SSL and SMTP authentication to prevent unauthorized access or flagging.
• Regular email audits are essential, make it a routine to test, verify, and optimize your setup.

Need help with SPF/DKIM setup or SMTP configuration?

Check out our detailed tutorials:
SMTP Configuration Guide for WordPress

Master the strategies to improve email deliverability and make inbox placement your competitive edge.