Email Deliverability

This isn’t a minor IT annoyance — it costs real money. Invoices sit in spam while you think a client is slow to pay. Quotes vanish, and by Wednesday the client has gone with whoever reached their inbox. I’ve worked with businesses whose emails were going to spam for months — until a client casually mentioned it.

Gmail and Outlook check three things about every email that arrives. Is the sender authorised (SPF)? Has it been tampered with (DKIM)? And what should happen to fakes (DMARC)? No records, no trust — your emails get lumped in with the scams.

A few other things hurt deliverability: a brand-new domain with no reputation, and sudden volume spikes. So do tools like Mailchimp or Xero sending “from” your domain without being authorised. Content matters less than people think — rewriting your emails won’t help if the problem is missing records.

Check yours: send a test email through mail-tester.com. Free, two minutes. Below 7 out of 10, something needs fixing.