5 Email Deliverability Tools You Should be Using

Adrian Williams
Adrian Williams

Founder, Email Angels

About the author

Published on: May 27, 2021

Last updated on: May 3, 2022

Authored by Adrian Williams, Founder of Email Angels

As an email deliverability consultant for the past ten years, I have worked with many different clients within different industries. Although each client presents its own unique need for my services, these are the tools that I have used to effectively solve their deliverability issues. These five tools have my highest recommendation when it comes to managing your email deliverability.

1. Excel Sheets

Although Airtable and similar platforms may suffice, Excel Sheets is my most important tool. I pull every single metric into an Excel sheet to create different dimensions to examine all the data points available. Once you have a “pulse” on the metrics, you’ll quickly notice anomalies that can indicate deliverability problems. It also forces you to look at everything. If you’re trying to resolve an existing problem, compare previous data points to current ones. In my experience, this will reveal the issues 90% of the time.

2. Seeds for Monitoring and Engagement

Seeds are the ultimate email growth hacking tool. They can be used for monitoring, or boost engagement for difficult scenarios up to a certain volume. It’s also great to kickstart a new domain and IP, especially if you don’t have a lot of engaging records yourself. For B2B mailing, I consider seeds invaluable, and InboxAlly is currently my favorite seed tool to use.

3. Deliverability Focused ESP

An ESP designed to maximize deliverability should have granular metrics broken out by ISPs like Gmail, Microsoft, and Verizon Media Group. Study the specific mailbox providers’ metrics to find which one(s) have issues. The ESP should also allow for throttling and different engagement segmentations based on the different ISPs. Another critical feature is the ability to plug in external SMTP relays. There’s no perfect system. The best tool I found to maintain deliverability is Ongage coupled with Sparkpost.

4. Email Intelligence Tool

If you haven’t heard of eDataSource, you’re in for an amazing treat! It allows you to get visibility to most of the high-volume senders. It will tell you their open rates, spam-folder ratio, and more. I’ve used it often to monitor my own email programs, and I’m always surprised to see how accurate eDataSource is.

5. Postmaster Tools

Checking your reputation with different ISPs is crucial because different ISPs have different tools and visibility. Outlook, Gmail, and Verizon Media Group are the three main ones you should sign up for.

Keep in mind that all of the tools above will not fix deliverability issues by themselves. The “know-how” on how to find the root causes and finding solutions are always more important. Be aware of the business model of the mailing program you’re analyzing, and reaffirm the following to yourself — “the right message, to the right user, at the right time.” If the recipients are not interested in your emails, getting them out of the spam folder will not fix anything.

About the author

Adrian Williams
Adrian Williams

Founder, Email Angels

Spanning an email career of over 25 years, Adrian Williams has worked with many notable tech, e-commerce, and lifestyle brands serving as an email marketing specialist. Throughout his varied experiences, he recognized that one of the most severe impediments to an email program’s success was a decline in sender reputation. After years of battling and solving complex deliverability issues as a part of his marketing responsibilities, Williams founded Email Angels in 2017 to focus solely on this specific, business-critical component.

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