Raj Kapoor Inbox placement is the percentage of your delivered email that actually reaches the inbox rather than the spam folder — and it is a very different, far more useful number than your delivery rate. You can have a 99% delivery rate and still have one message in six quietly filtered to spam. This guide explains … Read more
An email blacklist (also called a blocklist or DNSBL) is a published database of IP addresses and domains known for sending spam, which receiving mail servers check in real time to decide whether to block or filter your messages. Landing on a major one can stop your email dead. This guide explains what an email … Read more
Sender reputation is the trust score mailbox providers assign to you, and it is the single biggest factor — after authentication — in whether your email reaches the inbox or the spam folder. It is tracked at two levels: your sending IP reputation and your domain reputation, with the domain now the dominant signal for … Read more
Email warm-up is the practice of gradually increasing how much you send from a new IP address or domain so mailbox providers can build a reputation for you from real engagement before you send at full volume. Skip it and a sudden burst of mail from an unknown sender looks exactly like a spam attack … Read more
A BIMI record is the DNS entry that can put your brand’s logo next to your messages in supporting inboxes — the blue-checkmark, logo-in-the-avatar treatment you have seen from big senders. BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is not an authentication method itself; it is a display layer that rides on top of an enforced … Read more
ARC email authentication — the Authenticated Received Chain — exists to solve one frustrating problem: legitimate mail that fails DMARC after it passes through a mailing list or forwarder. When an intermediary modifies a message or relays it from a new IP, it breaks SPF and DKIM, so DMARC fails even though the mail was … Read more
TLS-RPT is the reporting layer that tells you when encrypted email delivery to your domain succeeds or fails. If you have deployed — or plan to deploy — MTA-STS or DANE to enforce TLS, you have a blind spot: when a sender cannot establish a secure connection and a message is delayed or refused, that … Read more
MTA-STS lets your domain require that other mail servers use encrypted, authenticated TLS when they deliver email to you. Without it, the encryption between mail servers is merely opportunistic — an attacker can strip it away and force your mail into plain text without anyone noticing. MTA-STS closes that gap by publishing a policy that … Read more
Reverse DNS maps an IP address back to a hostname, and for email it is one of the quiet make-or-break signals of whether your mail is trusted or blocked. Where forward DNS turns a name into an IP, reverse DNS does the opposite using a PTR record, and mailbox providers check it on every connection. … Read more
An MX record is the DNS entry that tells the rest of the internet which servers accept email for your domain. Every message sent to an address at your domain is routed by its MX record, which makes it the foundation of inbound mail — get it wrong and you simply stop receiving email. This … Read more