What is an email deliverability audit
Email Deliverability is defined as percentage of emails which are meaningfully landing in the inbox of your recipients and not their spam.
Poor email deliverability is a very common problem which most of us who are in email marketing face. Deliverability issues are not limited to scenarios where the emails are sent in bulk but they occur even in cases of transactional emails and personal emails. But the term Email Deliverability Audit is not very well known.
When someone face deliverability issues, most of the time he thinks of the technical configurations like SPF and DKIM which might be wrong or he thinks of IP blacklisting. What he does not realise that there can be tons of factors which may be impacting his email deliverability.
With continuously evolving algorithms of email providers like Gmail we can not say for sure what all parameters these algorithms consider to determine the placement of an email. But to fix the deliverability issues its best to look as many aspects of your emailing as possible. And that is the reason you need some expert help.
The email deliverability auditor actually goes and understand the whole flow of your platform and looks in to all nitty gritty of your emails. He tries to analyse all scenarios where your email may be caught by spam filters.
Some of the aspects included in the email deliverability audit are:
- Inbox Placement Review with Seed List Testing
- IP and Domain/Sub-Domain Reputation Review
- Email Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) Review
- Content Review - spaminess, language, design of template, images, links etc
- Service Provider Setup Review - Domain white-listing
- Data Management Review - Unsubscribe, Feedback Loops, Bounce Handling, List Quality
- Review of your campaign management practices
- Seed list testing
How long do deliverability fixes take?
A question we hear on almost every audit call: once the problems are found, how fast can they be fixed? The honest answer has three speeds:
- Days: configuration issues - broken or missing SPF, DKIM or DMARC records, alignment problems, DNS and reverse-DNS mistakes. Once corrected, they take effect as soon as DNS propagates and mailbox providers re-evaluate your mail.
- One to two send cycles: content and list problems - spam-triggering templates, stale segments, missing bounce handling or sunset policies. You see the effect on the very next campaigns after the fix.
- Weeks to months: reputation recovery. If Gmail or Microsoft has already classified your domain or IP as a poor sender, no DNS change reverses that overnight - it takes consistent, clean sending after the root cause is removed. Mild cases recover in a few weeks; severe ones, with long-term complaint problems or repeated blacklistings, can take months.
This is why our audit report separates short-term and long-term next steps - the quick wins ship in week one while the slower reputation work runs in the background.
At Postbox Consultancy Services we conduct a through audit on your system and compile all findings in a PDF. The report is shared with you and then we walk you through the report and help you understand the issues which are impacting the deliverability. The report also includes short and long term next steps, tools recommendations and it will work as a deliverability bible for your email marketing team for many years to come.
In case you are facing some deliverability issues in your emailing and need some help, please don't hesitate to drop us a line and we will get back to you. Our audits have helped a number of clients till now to get better insights in to their emailing and we have helped them to improve significantly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is included in a professional email deliverability audit?
A professional deliverability audit checks every factor that decides whether your mail reaches the inbox, not just whether it sends. At Postbox Consultancy Services we review authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC and alignment), domain and IP reputation, blacklist status, DNS and reverse DNS, content and spam-trigger analysis, list hygiene, your data and segmentation approach, your sending practices and patterns, and your sending infrastructure and volumes. You get a graded report with every issue prioritised by impact and a concrete fix plan, not a dashboard screenshot.
Can someone audit our Klaviyo deliverability and tell us what is wrong?
Yes. Klaviyo deliverability problems usually trace to a handful of causes: a shared or poorly warmed sending domain, weak authentication or alignment, list and engagement decay, or content that trips filters. An audit isolates which. We review your Klaviyo sending domain and DNS, segmentation and sunset practices, engagement trends and inbox placement, then give you a prioritised fix list. The process is ESP-agnostic, so it applies whether you send from Klaviyo, Mailchimp or anything else.
How long does a consultant take to fix deliverability problems?
It depends on what the audit finds, and an honest consultant will give you three timelines, not one. Configuration problems - broken or missing SPF, DKIM or DMARC records, alignment failures, DNS mistakes - are typically fixed within days of being identified. Content and list-hygiene issues usually show results within one or two send cycles after the fix. Reputation recovery is the slow lane: once Gmail or Microsoft has classified your domain or IP as a poor sender, it takes weeks of consistent, clean sending after the root cause is removed, and severe cases with long-running complaint problems or repeated blacklistings can take months. Our audit reports separate these quick wins from the slow rebuilds so you know what to expect from week one.