Choose your situation
Email deliverability: diagnosing a sending problem
Before you rewrite your message, pin down the exact symptom. "Nothing goes out", "everything lands in spam" and "lots of bounces" have different causes and different fixes.
At support, a good share of "deliverability problems" turn out to be a setting: a campaign outside its sending window, open tracking switched off, a disconnected mailbox. Always rule out these simple causes first.
Find your symptom
Start from what you actually see in Emelia, not from what you suspect. Each row points to the page that deals with the cause.
| What you see | Most likely cause | Read |
|---|---|---|
| The campaign is Running but no email goes out | Sending window, disconnected mailbox, empty list, subscription, cadence | My campaign sends nothing |
| Emails go out, prospects reply, but opens show 0% | Open tracking switched off or broken tracking domain: the measurement is what's broken | 0% open rate |
| Under 30% opens on a varied audience | Spam: provider, authentication, reputation, volume, content | My emails land in spam |
| The warm-up score drops, or warm-up switched itself off | Provider, DNS, warm-up emails rejected | Warm-up turns itself off |
| More than 5% bounces | Where the addresses came from, or your provider's quota | I have too many bounces |
| Bounces grouped around the same hours, with "limit", "quota" or "per hour" in the message | Your provider refuses to send: the addresses are valid | False bounces |
| My test email never arrives, or lands in spam | Test sent to an address too close to the sender | Assessing your real deliverability |
| Everything is fine, I want to keep it that way | Prevention | The golden rules |
How your emails actually leave
Emelia has no sending server. It connects to your mailbox the way Outlook or Apple Mail would, and your emails go out through your provider's servers and IP addresses (Google, Microsoft, OVH…). So deliverability is decided on your side: the provider, the domain name, the volume per mailbox, the audience and the content.
In practice, there is no Emelia IP, SPF "include" or DKIM key to add to your DNS. The only Emelia-specific record is the CNAME of your tracking domain.
The open rate of a real campaign, with open tracking switched on: above 70% is excellent, around 50% is fine, under 30% you have a deliverability problem, not a subject line problem.
Three checks before you blame spam
- Check the measurement. On a new campaign, open tracking is off by default. Until you switch it on, a 0% open rate means nothing.
- Ignore the test email you sent yourself. Gmail and Outlook distrust a message whose sender and recipient look alike: a test landing in spam says nothing about what your prospects will see.
- Read the rejection message in full. A bounce that mentions "limit", "quota" or "per hour" comes from your own provider, not from a bad address. The error code (550 5.7.708, 554 5.7.1…) points straight to the diagnosis.
Content matters, but it comes after the provider, authentication and volume. Changing the subject line of a campaign sent from a provider that blocks you will change nothing.
What are you seeing?
Frequently asked questions
The questions we get asked on this topic, answered briefly.
Does Emelia send my emails from its own servers?
No. Emelia connects to your mailbox and your emails leave through your provider's servers, exactly as if you sent them from your email client. What counts is the reputation of your provider and your domain.
Do I need to add an Emelia IP or SPF record to my DNS?
No, and you really shouldn't. SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up following your provider's documentation. The only Emelia-related record is the CNAME of your tracking domain.
Can I tell whether a specific email landed in spam?
No, no tool can tell you recipient by recipient. You read trends instead: the campaign's open rate, the number of replies, the mailbox's warm-up score. See Assessing your real deliverability.