Three myths about email deliverability

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. A few things about email deliverability that get repeated more often than they get checked.

The cheapest security work is the boring kind done on a schedule. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

“It only matters for big sites”

Authentication records decide whether mail reaches the inbox. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one.

“Our platform handles it”

Monitor bounces before a campaign, not after. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

How to tell if yours is fine

The realistic threat for most small businesses is automated and opportunistic, not targeted. Three things worth confirming about email deliverability before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Sending from a shared address hurts your reputation — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.