A set of checks to run before every campaign, so your emails have the best possible chance of landing in the inbox.
What This Checklist Covers
Why This Matters for Email Marketing
A single missed step rarely causes damage on its own. The real risk is stacking mistakes, an unclean list, a risky subject line, and a sudden volume spike, all happening on the same big sale campaign. Any one alone might be fine. Together, they can tank inbox placement for weeks.
Setup Phase (once per domain)
– SPF record set up and passing
– DKIM record set up and passing
– DMARC record published, at least at p=none
– Sending from your own branded domain, not a free email address
– Google Postmaster Tools set up if sending meaningful Gmail volume
List Hygiene Phase (monthly)
– Hard bounces removed within the last 30 days
– Subscribers inactive 90 to 180 days moved to re-engagement or suppressed
– No purchased or scraped addresses on the list
– Segments updated based on recent purchase and engagement behavior
Content Phase (every campaign)
– Subject line avoids excessive punctuation and spam trigger phrases
– Image-to-text ratio is balanced
– All links go to secure, working, branded URLs
– Unsubscribe link is visible and works in one click
– Alt text added to all images
Pre-Send Phase (every campaign)
– Spam score checked with a tool like Mail Tester
– Sending volume compared against what you normally send
– Email previewed on both desktop and mobile
– Rendering checked across Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook
How Adflipr Helps
Adflipr covers several of these automatically: SPF and DKIM generation during domain setup, one-click unsubscribe on every campaign, and automatic hard bounce suppression, so a good part of this checklist is already handled before you even open the campaign editor.
Best Practices
– Save this checklist somewhere accessible before every send, not just in memory
– Treat big sale campaigns with more scrutiny, not less, since volume and visibility are both higher
– Build list hygiene into a recurring monthly task instead of relying on remembering
– Assign checklist ownership if you work with a team
Common Mistakes
– Only checking deliverability after a campaign already underperforms
– Skipping the pre-send phase because the list feels small enough not to matter
– Forgetting to recheck authentication after switching platforms
– Treating list hygiene as a one-time task instead of an ongoing habit
Frequently Asked Questions
At minimum: authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), list hygiene (removing bounces and inactive contacts), content checks (subject line, image ratio, unsubscribe link), and a pre-send spam score test. These four categories cover most deliverability issues.
Double check authentication status, confirm the list has been cleaned in the last 30 days, run a spam score test, and compare planned volume against what you normally send, to avoid looking like a sudden spike.
Setup items need review only after major changes. List hygiene should happen monthly. Content and pre-send checks belong in every single campaign, regardless of list size.
No checklist guarantees 100%, since filtering systems are dynamic. But consistently running through this one removes most of the common, preventable causes of spam folder placement.
