How to Improve Email Deliverability in 2026

Better inbox placement starts long before you hit “send.” Here are five strategies to keep more of your campaigns out of spam.

"Our deliverability dropped."

I hear some version of that pretty much every week from my clients. So naturally, my next question is, "Okay… what changed?" Nine times out of ten, the answer is: "Nothing." And guess what? That's exactly the problem. Deliverability rarely falls off a cliff overnight. It's usually dozens of small decisions that build up and chip away at your sender reputation until inbox providers decide they trust you less than they used to. For example, are you emailing subscribers who stopped engaging months ago? Or growing your list with the wrong people? Or ghosting your new subscribers?

While these don’t feel like major issues on their own — and they’re easy to miss — they tell inbox providers that your emails aren’t as valuable as they used to be. The good news? Most deliverability problems aren't permanent. Once you know where to look, they're surprisingly fixable. Here are the 5 areas I’d focus on first as an email deliverability consultant and marketing strategist.

1. Focus on your list quality, not size.

One of the biggest misconceptions in email deliverability and marketing is that bigger means better. 

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.

A massive email list means nothing if half of the people haven’t opened an email for six months. In fact, I’d rather see you have a list of 50 subscribers who consistently open, click, reply, and purchase than a list of 1,000 subscribers who delete your emails without giving you a chance. 

That means avoiding shortcuts like buying lists, scraping email addresses off the internet, or adding people who never actually opted in. Does your list get bigger? Sure. But your sender reputation shrinks.

Real talk: Retention growth is hard work. Growing your list the right way takes time, effort, and sometimes, money. So I totally get why people look for shortcuts. But if you want to burn your list all down at the expense of building it up fast…well, it’s going to cost you.

TL;DR: A smaller, engaged list will outperform a bloated one every. single. time.

2. Grow your list through trusted relationships.

Everyone wants to grow their email list faster. But say it with me now: Quick fixes are the quickest way to hurt your deliverability.

So, what do you do when you want to grow your list while improving your list quality? Lean into your network. Partner with businesses that serve similar audiences, and rely on the trust they’ve built with their audiences.

Think about it this way: If one of your favorite brands recommends another business, you're much more likely to check them out than if some random ad that popped up in your feed. Email works the same way. Borrowing trust is one of the healthiest ways to grow your list because the people discovering you already have context for why they should care. 

Here are my suggestions. I call these the GOLD methods. They won't magically double your list overnight, but they will help you grow without making your deliverability cry:

Affiliate partnerships

A well-built affiliate network can do wonders for list and customer growth. It can be hard at first, but when done right, it gives back a hundred-fold without you doing too much heavy lifting. Use a tool like Social Snowball, a content creator network that turns your loyal customers into your best marketers. This can replace pricey influencers while building out your social content creators to promote your products to their audiences.

Email spotlights and guest features

Get a feature in another brand's email. Find a brand that has a similar audience to yours and create an offer to spotlight to their subscribers. It’s instant exposure and fully permission-based.

Co-creating and cross-promoting resources and promotions

Whether you do a bundle or boxed gift with other brands, collaborations are a great way to access complementary brands' lists through consent marketing while also allowing low-risk trial of your products.

You should always aim to do customer acquisition (paid or organic) because it’s still the highest form of quality traffic, but I recommend using the gold methods above to “layer” into a new audience into your list. 

3. Look at metrics beyond open rates.

Open rates are still important, but they only tell one part of the story. Inbox providers have become much more sophisticated when it comes to measuring engagement. So, instead of obsessing over the number of opens on your newsletters, you should also start looking at behaviors like:

• Website activity

• Clicks

• Purchases

• Replies

• Browsing behavior

• Customer journey stage

The goal isn't to chase vanity metrics. The goal is to understand whether subscribers are actually finding value in what you're sending because that's what inbox providers care about too.

4. Don’t ghost your new subscribers.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is brands working incredibly hard to earn an email address… and then doing absolutely nothing with it.

Ouch.

Someone trusted you enough to hand over their email address. Don’t reward them with silence. Every new subscriber should hear from you immediately. Your next steps should be to welcome them, set expectations, deliver value, and remind them why they subscribed in the first place. The sooner you build a relationship, the stronger your long-term engagement and email deliverability.

5. Treat deliverability as ongoing maintenance.

Lastly, remember that deliverability isn’t something you check on once a year. It’s something you should be maintaining regularly. I recommend putting a recurring reminder on your calendar every quarter to:

• Audit your inactive subscribers

• Review your engagement trends

• Monitor your spam complaint rate

• Evaluate your automations

• Monitor how often your audience hears from you

Think of it like going to the dentist. A quick cleaning every few months is a lot easier (and cheaper) than waiting until you need a root canal. Deliverability works the same way.

Need help figuring out what's holding your deliverability back?

If you're not sure what's actually hurting your deliverability, let's find it. Whether you need a deliverability audit, help cleaning up your list, or someone to finally tell you why Gmail seems to hate your emails, I'd love to help.

Book a strategy call and let's build an email system that lands in more inboxes — and drives more revenue.