How to improve email deliverability for a B2B program
Deliverability degrades quietly. By the time the open rate drops, the underlying reputation damage has been accumulating for weeks. Recovery is gradual; the only durable fix is upstream discipline.
These steps are sequenced. Doing the suppression work before fixing authentication is wasted effort.
Steps
- 1
Verify authentication
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured correctly with alignment, plus DMARC aggregate reporting going to an inbox someone reads. Authentication failures are foundational; nothing else matters until they're resolved.
- 2
Read reputation across providers
Google Postmaster Tools for the gmail-served audience, Microsoft SNDS for outlook.com and hotmail.com, blocklist status from Spamhaus and Barracuda. Domain and IP reputation are separate signals; both matter.
- 3
Suppress disengaged contacts
Build a suppression segment for contacts with no engagement in the last 90 to 180 days, depending on send cadence. Sending into disengaged audiences drags engagement metrics, which mailbox providers read as a signal to deprioritize.
- 4
Segment transactional from marketing
Different sending streams should sit on different subdomains. A reputation hit on the marketing subdomain should not take down password resets and order confirmations.
- 5
Re-engagement program
For contacts in the suppression segment with historical value, run a structured re-engagement campaign. Open rate over 15 percent re-qualifies for the active list; below 5 percent means hard suppression.
- 6
Audit content patterns
Image-to-text ratio, link reputation, spam-trigger language, and rendering across major mail clients. Modern filters care less about content patterns than they used to, but obvious red flags still matter.
Frequently asked questions
QHow long does deliverability recovery take?+
QShould I get a dedicated IP?+
QIs open rate still useful with Apple Mail Privacy Protection?+
QWhat about cold outbound?+
Need senior help applying this in your environment?
Reading the guide is one thing. Translating it into the live system you actually have to operate on Monday is another. That's where the conversation usually starts.