MailVitalsEmail deliverability
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Module 4 · Lesson 15 of 37

What Actually Determines Inbox Placement

Part of The Complete Email Deliverability Course — Inbox Placement & Spam Filtering.

The 2025-2026 inbox placement hierarchy (ranked):

  1. 🏆 Sender reputation (domain + IP) — the dominant factor
  2. 🔐 Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) — unauthenticated = 30-50% inbox vs 85-95%
  3. 📊 Spam complaint rate — must stay below 0.1% (max 0.3%)
  4. 💡 Engagement metrics — opens, clicks, replies, forwards
  5. 📉 Bounce rate — keep below 1-2%
  6. ✉️ List quality — spam trap avoidance, valid addresses
  7. 📆 Sending consistency — regular cadence, no sporadic spikes
  8. 📝 Content quality — evaluated holistically, not by keywords

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Beat · paid monitoring

A heartbeat for your email.

Beat runs every check on this site on a schedule — 41 checks, 34 blacklists, real inbox placement — and the moment something breaks it tells you what broke, why it matters, and the exact fix.

Get early access to BeatSee what Beat watches
example.comWatching
  • SPFpass
  • DKIMpass
  • DMARCp=none
  • Blacklists0 of 34

Illustrative. Your domain, every few hours.

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