If you are like me (which is likely since you read this geeky newsletter about emails), then you’ve probably watched people check out the second SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and the rest of the email alphabet enter the meeting. Acronyms enter, interest exits.
But getting into the inbox is no longer something you set up once and then leave in a dusty corner of your email program. Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook are paying attention to who you are, where your subscribers came from, what you send them, whether they interact with it, and how many times you’ve emailed them like a needy person in accounting.
In other words, deliverability lives everywhere. It’s in your authentication records, your signup sources, your segmentation, your content, and the people who haven’t opened an email since the last FIFA World Cup. The technical stuff gets you through the door. What you do afterward determines whether you’re invited back.
At Unspam, Israa Alrawi walked through the whole thing without anyone crying, shutting down their email program, or pretending they suddenly understood DNS. The big lesson: you don’t automatically deserve the inbox because someone gave you their email address once. You have to keep earning it.
