Email Deliverability: How To Land In The Primary Inbox
Mar 2, 2026
Out of everything you could possibly do to improve your email marketing (and there’s a lot)-
There is one thing that routinely gets neglected:
Deliverability.
(Staying in peoples’ primary inbox and avoiding the spam folder.)
I don’t know why this is. Maybe because it’s not as sexy as atttention-grabbing subject lines. Or because there is a perceived technicality to it. Maybe business owners just don't understand it, and that's why a lot of brands and creators fail to ever take it seriously.
But when you neglect deliverability-
It’s not an exaggeration to say that your entire email system falls apart.
You could have the best emails in the world-
But if they are going to spam?
Nobody opens them, and everything downstream of that suffers as a result.
This post covers:
The couple of reasons email deliverability should be an absolute priority at your business
How deliverability has changed in the past couple of years
The 3 things you need to do to improve your deliverability over time
Treat this as your complete gameplan for improving your deliverability, landing in more inboxes, and making more bucks as a result.
Why Email Deliverability Is Important For Businesses
The first and most obvious one:
#1: Good deliverability = you land in the inbox instead of spam = more people actually read your emails.
When you are in spam, people just don’t open your emails. And when that happens, there’s really nothing else you can do.
If you want email to actually contribute your business goals-
Nothing matters if your email deliverability sucks.
#2: Good deliverability creates a kind of (good) snowball.
Treat every single positive interaction with your emails as a green flag.
Every time someone:
Opens your email
Clicks a link in your email
Replies to an email you send
…that’s a green flag to the main email providers like Gmail, Outlook and Apple. And the more green flags you pile up, the more your emails land in the inbox-
And the more green flags you continue to get.
And the only way to get these green flags and allow that snowball to gain momentum?
To actually be in the main inbox in the first place.
It’s a self-enforcing cycle that leads to more engagement and more sales. And it all starts with deliverability.
#3: The more you prioritize good deliverability, the more you send emails that people actually want to read.
This is kind of meta, but it’s important to understand:
When you take deliverability seriously, here is the cycle you go through:
You learn what deliverability actually means…
You start to understand the emails that land in spam (and the ones that land in the inbox)…
And you naturally start to create more emails that land in the inbox (AKA, good ones)
Another self-enforcing cycle-
And this one is all about building a strong foundation under your business.
Why Email Deliverability Is More Important Than Ever
I'm writing this in 2026.
Here are a few reasons good email deliverability practices have never been more important than they are right now:
#1: Verified sending standards.
Protocols like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM are no longer optional. Enforcement has gotten tighter than ever.
Fail to comply, and you’re at risk of immediate spam filtering.
#2: New privacy features.
Companies like Apple seem to roll out a new email update every week. This messes with your numbers.
That means you can’t just rely on things like open rate - and should be pursuing a more holistic approach to your email marketing.
#3: Engagement-based filtering.
Going off that “holistic” point: gaming email deliverability used to be much easier.
But now? Email servers look at your subscriber’s overall engagement to determine the quality of your emails. Much harder to fake!
#4: AI spam filters.
Different AI softwares are getting better and better at spotting “patterns of abuse” (excessive promotions, spammy words, huge spikes in send volume). This makes it harder to rely on the strategies of the past-
And professional skill in email deliverability all the more essential.
Basically, in 2026-
It's never been harder to land in the primary inbox if you don't take deliverability seriously.
None of this is meant to scare you-
Just to show you how important it really is. As for the things you actually need to do for better email deliverability?
Next section! :)
The 3 Most Important Things You Need To Do For Better Email Deliverability
#1: Get your technical setup correct.
What I mean are the sending protocols that show platforms like Gmail, Apple and Outlook that your domain is legit and that you are sending real emails. This includes things like DMARC, DKIM, and SPF.
Sounds boring for most business owners (and it kind of is). But if you don’t have these set up, nothing else really matters. Plenty of YouTube videos out there that cover all of this. Just look up "email sending protocols."
You probably already have these set up, but it never hurts to check.
#2: Send emails consistently.
When you ghost your email list for awhile, and then randomly start sending a bunch of emails again-
That looks spammy.
This is why I always recommend a good rule of thumb:
Take your average emails sent per week, add one, and then do that consistently.
This more than anything will build the habit of emailsing your list more often.
One other thing you can do to put this on autopilot:
Set up more sequences. The more emails you have going out automatically (welcome sequence, post purchase sequence, cross-sell sequence) the more emails you send overall. (Duh.)
#3: Drive your main numbers as high as possible.
By this I mean specifically open rates, click rates, reply rates, and spam complaint rates (this one should be as low as possible).
Treat these numbers as kind of the “holy grail” of email deliverability. Why?
When you get these numbers in a good place-
Everything kind of takes care of itself.
A few tips:
Send good emails. Obvious one here, but when people are used to getting high quality emails from you, they open them more often, click your links more often, reply to you, and don’t mark you as spam. Send good emails!
Ask for replies as much as possible. More and more, email platforms treat replies to your email as one of the most important signs of engagement. So just ask for replies a bunch (and incentivize people for doing so).
Use segmentation. You really only want to send emails to the most engaged subscribers that you have. Never (and I mean never) just blast your entire list with the same email. The more you seriously segmentation, the more you ensure you are sending emails to people that will actually open and engage with them. And that will build your deliverability over time.
Like Anything Else With Your Email Marketing…
…it's really just a matter of doing it.
Email deliverability isn't complicated. You just need to prioritize it.
And when you do?
You avoid spam, land in the primary inbox, and make more money. Simple as that.
…
I help education businesses make more money from their email list. Two actions for you:
If you're interested in working with me to maximize email revenue:
If you want to check out my 33 email marketing lessons from managing a $10-million email list: