Getting Started

Everest Daily Deliverability Checklist

Regularly monitoring your sending performance is vital to achieving a healthy email program. It is especially important if you send email on a daily basis, because you never know when an issue will arise that leads to poor results.

To make the most out of this checklist, we recommend completing Everest's Basic and Advanced setup guides. 

Before you get started

Make sure you have access to the following data sources and information.

Data sources

Your sending details

Mailbox providers look at your performance across all of your IPs and domains. Having this information helps you quickly identify and troubleshoot problems.

  • A full list of your sending IP addresses
  • A full list of your sending domains
  • A list of traffic sent from each IP and domain (e.g. marketing, transactional)

Once you have Everest and the data sources set up, follow the steps below every day in order to identify issues as they arise (step 6 has links for troubleshooting tips if needed). If you are not a daily sender, you can still use these steps to check on your performance on a frequent basis, whether you send only a few times per week or a few times per month. 


Step 1: Are you having any delivery problems?

Your ESP or MTA

If you have the Everest ESP integration or Everest Webhook set up, you can review delivery data in: Monitoring>Engagement>Delivery Insights.

  • Review "delivered" rate trends by receiving domain.
    • Most mail servers and ESPs provide a report that shows "delivered" rates for your account. These metrics are often above 98%, and based on the receiving mail servers' hard bounce codes. Delivered rates tell you the messages were accepted for delivery. It does not tell you your inbox placement or spam placement rate. A delivered rate below 98% may mean your IP and/or domain is on a blocklist or your email list contains a large number of unknown users. Depending on your business model and list acquisition practices, a lower delivery rate may be "normal".
  • Review soft bounces by receiving domain.
    • Soft bounces are temporary in nature but may indicate an issue with your email program related to reputation-based throttling at particular mailbox providers. They may also indicate a technical issue with a mailbox provider which can cause delays in processing your email and engagement metrics.
  • Look at your average delivery rate over time.
    • Look at the past 7 and 30 days if you are a frequent sender (daily, multiple times per week), or look at the past 5-10 campaigns if you send infrequently (a few times per month). If you see your delivery rate dip below the average rates, especially if it is a large dip, it may indicate a problem. Delivered rates may dip due to a blocklisted IP or domain.
  • Review trends in open and click rates by mailbox provider.
    • If you have a delivery problem at a particular mailbox provider, you may find that open and click rate trends drop from previous levels. Focus on the top 5-10 mailbox providers as measured by the percentage of your email list because they have the most impact on your results

Step 2: Are you having any deliverability problems?

Everest

  • Check your dashboards or alerts. (My Everest>Dashboards, My Everest>Alerts)
    • A dashboard provides a quick glance into any potential problems and trends.
    • An alert arrives in your mailbox at a frequency you define to let you know of any issues needing attention.
  • Review inbox placement rates for each message sent to your Everest seed list. (In-Flight>Inbox Placement>Inbox tests) 
    • Data from your mail server only tells you when email is accepted for delivery and not your inbox placement rate. Messages that finished processing have a green check mark in the Inbox Tests section. 
    • How does your inbox placement rate compare to your 7 and 30 day average? Has it declined below what you expect for this message?

Step 3: Are there problematic trends in sending reputation?

If you are in the happy situation of not having any urgent deliverability issues, the next step is to review trends in reputation to see if there might be any upcoming reputation-based delivery issues.

Everest 

Navigate to: Monitoring>Reputation

  • Blocklisted
    • Are there any new blocklistings?
    • You should mostly be concerned with getting listed on the important blocklists as they have the most negative impact on deliverability.
  • Sender Score
    • Check your summary reputation score for each IP address. A declining score indicates that you should spend some time diving into the specific metrics that make up the score. It is important to note that you may not see immediate deliverability impacts when your score declines. Below are some general guidelines - be sure to also look at deliverability and response metrics to determine the problem’s severity.
      • If your score dips below 90, do some high level analysis to determine if any reputation metrics are out of the ordinary or trending in the wrong direction.
      • If your score dips below 85, do more detailed analysis into the reputation metrics to identify potential causes. It is important to try and identify and fix problems when they are relatively small, otherwise you may risk impacts to your business should the problems become larger.
      • If your score experiences large, unexplained declines of 10 points or more in a short period of time, it may indicate a major problem with your email program. Unauthorized sending from your IP, sending to a suppression list, or sending to a purchased email list are common causes for large declines in the score.
  • Check the individual reputation metrics for each IP address. These include:
    • Volume. The critical components of volume are consistency in both number of messages sent as well as cadence. Erratic sending patterns, such as a sudden large increase in volume, can result in points lost from your Sender Score. If you see unexpected increases in volume, check for the cause. Abnormal volume increases often happen during special events and holidays.
    • Unknown-user rate. Most mail servers and ESPs can give you a report that shows the number of unknown user (i.e. email address does not exist) bounce messages. A high unknown-user rate (in excess of 5%) is frequently correlated with deliverability issues. However, look for increases in unknown users over 7 and 30 day periods as it may indicate a problem with list acquisition or bounce processing.
    • Complaint rate (As reported by Validity data providers). Review the overall trend over 7 and 30 days. If you see a spike in complaints, your next step will be to figure out what has changed. New data source? Increased frequency? New mailing programs?
    • Spam traps. Sending to spam traps can indicate a list quality issue. While many mailbox providers generally tolerate a low number of recycled spam trap hits, pristine spam trap hits may cause delivery problems. Pristine spam traps never belonged to a real person, so having them on your list can tell mailbox providers that you are not using opt-in consent methods and may be purchasing lists.

Complaints (Feedback Loops)

  • Review the overall trend over 7 and 30 days. If you see a spike in complaints, your next step will be to figure out what has changed. New data source? Increased frequency? New mailing programs?

Microsoft’s SNDS 

  • Microsoft SNDS Trend tile
    • Look for yellow and red filter results which tell you that a higher percentage of your messages are receiving a “spam” verdict. Green means that a lower percentage of your messages are receiving a “spam” verdict.
    • Review the bounces, traps and complaints data
  • IP Performance tile
    • Note any IPs that are bad performers and determine if those IPs are used for specific mail streams or customer segments
  • IP Issues tile
    • Look at the Reason column for any listed IPs

Google Postmaster 

  • While Google postmaster data mostly benefits high volume senders, it may give you insights into problematic IPs and domains.
  • Check your IP and domain reputation performance over 7 and 30 days to identify trends. Look for unexplained reputation decreases and try to determine if there were recent sending changes or campaigns sent that may have contributed to the decrease.
  • Check other data points such as User-Reported Spam Rate, Authentication, and Delivery Errors to identify potential delivery problems.

Step 4: Are your Certification metrics in compliance with mailbox provider thresholds?

Navigate to: In-Flight>Certification

If you participate in Validity's Certification program, it is a good habit to check your Daily Performance Report (DPR), which is sent directly to your mailbox. You can also access Certification data through Everest.

Look for the colored indicators for warning (yellow) and out of compliance (red). They can help guide your troubleshooting efforts.

Step 5: Are there problematic trends in your Engagement data?

Everest

Navigate to: Monitoring>Engagement

Top mailbox providers such as Gmail and Microsoft use engagement metrics in their spam filter. 

  • Review recent activity and look for trends in both the Engagement Overview and Delivery Insights tabs.
    • Do you see any unexpected behavior or trends in Avg Read Time, opens, or unique opens?

Your ESP or MTA

  • Review your click rate. If your email is sent to the spam folder, your click rate may decrease.
  • Review your unsubscribe rate. Are you seeing a short term increase in unsubscribe requests or a long-term upward trend? A high unsubscribe rate may indicate you acquired email addresses that did not opt-in or that your content strategy needs attention.

Step 6: Troubleshoot any issues surfaced in the first 5 steps

If you do not find any immediate causes for concern, congratulations! But, if you are seeing poor results, take time to troubleshoot and fix the cause. When troubleshooting, be sure to use all available data sources. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related articles

Get Everest

We're assuming you already have Everest but if you don't, you should totally get it!

Company
Products
Solutions
Resources
Contact