Deliverability: Best Practices for New Senders

Jan 30, 2026
Knowledge

Body

This article covers best practices for strengthening your sender reputation and deliverability when migrating to Emma from your previous ESP.

Email deliverability can be a complex topic, and it’s important to keep in mind that there isn’t a magic formula to guarantee your emails will land in the inbox. However, there are several variables outlined here that you can control that will increase your chances.

	In This Article
	Video Tutorial Clean and Organize Your List Authenticate Your Domain Plan a Transition Strategy Export Previous Engagement History Build Engaging Content Additional Resources

Watch a Quick Video Tutorial on Email Content Best Practices

Clean and Organize Your List

☑	Tip
	When you begin sending marketing emails from a new platform, a freshly updated and organized list is an important step in starting out on the right deliverability foot.

When migrating to Emma, you will most likely need to export a list of contacts from your previous email service provider (ESP). When you import your contacts into Emma, addresses will be in the Active status and ready to receive messages from you. To protect your sender reputation, you’ll need to change the status of some contacts before sending. Contacts who previously unsubscribed should be moved to the Opt-out status; contacts who previously bounced should be moved to the Error status.

Unsubscribed Contacts

Export a list of all unsubscribed email addresses from your previous ESP(s).
Import your list of unsubscribed contacts into Emma and place it into a group named “Unsubscribed”.
Navigate to your Audience tab.
Click on the Groups section in the panel on the left.
Click on the Unsubscribed group to open it.
Click on the Actions button and select Change status of all from the dropdown menu.
In the pop-up window that appears, select Opt-out.
Click on the Save button.

Bounced Email Addresses

Export a list of all bounces from your previous ESP(s).
Import your list of bounced contacts into Emma and place it into a group named “Bounces”.
Navigate to your Audience tab.
Click on the Groups section in the panel on the left.
Click on the Bounces group to open it.
Click on the Actions button and select Change status of all from the dropdown menu.
In the pop-up window that appears, select Error.
Click on the Save button.

Previously Active Email Addresses With No Activity in the Last 12 Months

To remain compliant with our Services Agreement, Acceptable Use Policy, and Anti-Spam Policy, you must remove any contacts from your audience who are active, but have not purchased or opened any emails within the last 12 months. This will help protect your reputation, as sending to unengaged contacts can affect your deliverability with your engaged contacts.

Authenticate Your Domain

Email authentication allows mailbox providers to ensure that the email is truly coming from the sender, and not someone pretending to be the sender. Although Emma automatically handles certain elements of authentication for you, there are three additional types of email authentication that should be set up to protect your sender reputation: DKIM, DMARC, and SPF.

DKIM

DKIM is an authentication method that helps ensure the sender's email address is legitimate and not being spoofed by a third party. Many major inbox providers require DKIM authentication for anyone sending through an ESP.

To set this up, please read this DKIM article (and feel free to forward it to your IT team as you will need their help with this). If you have a tiered account, you may also want to check out our DKIM for tiered accounts article.

DMARC

DMARC is another email authentication tool that's designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domain from unauthorized use, like email spoofing.

Like DKIM, many major inbox providers require that anyone sending through an ESP have a DMARC policy on their domain. In order to protect your sending reputation and prevent any delivery trouble, it's vital that you set up both DKIM and DMARC before sending any mailings from Emma.

SPF

Your organization's Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record allows receiving servers to see that we are authorized to send emails on behalf of your domain. This is why we recommend that you also update your SPF record with our unique URL. To do this, your IT team would just need to include "_spf.e2ma.net" in your existing SPF record.

Plan a Transition Strategy

It's common for open rates to fluctuate when you switch ESPs. This is because mailbox providers are not used to your domain sending from Emma's IPs, so they must re-evaluate your reputation. During this re-evaluation period, engagement rates often rise and fall before eventually leveling out.

☑	Tip
	The best way to signal to mailbox providers that you are sending inbox-worthy mail is to incrementally ramp up your sending.

While you're ramping up your sending, here are some important things to keep in mind:

Choose an increment to use as you increase your sending. Start with a number and double it each day.
Remain aware of your contacts' engagement throughout the process.
Hold at a number if issues appear to occur. Don't stop sending or start sending to fewer contacts; just hold steady at the current number until things seem to get back to normal.

Some advise to focusing on a stronger ratio of engaged contacts on the new platform and slowly adding the less engaged contacts from the old platform over time. This can help create a smoother transition but it also burns the reputation of the old platform, which is not a fair thing to do. In most circumstances, it's unnecessary to focus on an engagement ratio during your transition. Focus on a quantity ramp-up rather than a quality one, and everything will transition just fine.

Export Previous Engagement History

Engagement history is one of the most important tools to have at your disposal when troubleshooting deliverability experiences. Whether for your internal team or for future support requests from any Emma teams, having the engagement history from your past ESP will be invaluable in the troubleshooting / planning processes.

If your former ESP doesn't allow all engagement data to be exported, you can still create a comprehensive picture of your engagement by exporting what you can and taking screenshots of the rest.

Build Engaging Content

There’s a lot that can be said about creating engaging and desirable content. Not only is it the entire purpose of the marketing industry, but from a deliverability perspective, things start better when coming from a more direct and minimalistic perspective.

☑	Tip
	The foundation of strong deliverability is sending desirable content to subscribers who have asked for it.

Start with a focus on visibility, conciseness, and strategy. Some marketers want to use their email campaigns for a large newsletter e-blast. While this “shotgunning” approach can seem to create a point of interest for all, a lot of marketers don’t realize that this can actually hurt deliverability when overused. Instead, using subscriber information gathered through signup forms or purchase history to segment your audience can allow you to tailor the content in your campaigns and create a better ROI than the giant newsletter approach.

Tips for Creating Content That Strengthens Your Deliverability Experience

Communicate early to your subscribers about major changes to your send behaviors, such as a change in domain or content approaches.
Give subscribers the ability to choose the frequency and type of content that they would like to receive from you. Activating your Subscription Center can help with this.
Focus on one main point / call to action and include other options below it that support this point rather than distract from it. For example, use a button that links out to your content as the focal point of your call to action.
Intermix value-providing campaigns between promotional campaigns. Too much promotional content can cause subscriber burnout, so make sure to show your gratitude for your subscribers' engagement by giving back through a loyalty program, a free gift, etc.

Sometimes marketers are not in full control of the types of content that they send to their audience. Newsletters have to be sent, big sales announced globally, and so on. The important thing to remember about these tips is that they are guidelines for strengthening your deliverability. Incorporating these principles into your sending practices can help stabilize and even strengthen your deliverability experience when paired with the other recommendations in this article.

Additional Resources

Title

Deliverability: Best Practices for New Senders

URL Name

Starting-Off-Strong-with-Deliverability-Best-Practices