Getting started with email deliverability
The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. A short on-ramp to email deliverability for teams who have not touched it before.
Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.
What it costs to ignore
Authentication records decide whether mail reaches the inbox. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Sending from a shared address hurts your reputation
- Change one thing and measure it
Monitor bounces before a campaign, not after. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
The short version
The cheapest security work is the boring kind done on a schedule. Three things worth confirming about email deliverability before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Authentication records decide whether mail reaches the inbox — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.