Inbox Placement Test

Why delivered does not mean inboxed

Your ESP reports a message as delivered when the receiving server accepts it. What happens next, inbox, promotions tab or spam folder, is invisible to the sender. A campaign can show 99 percent delivered while a third of it sits in spam at Outlook. Open rates hint at the problem, but they are noisy since privacy features started loading images automatically.

A placement test closes that gap with direct evidence. You send to mailboxes we control and can read, and the result tells you exactly where the message landed at each provider.

How the test works

Because you send the message yourself, the test reflects your real setup: your ESP's IPs, your DKIM signature, your links and your content. Nothing is sent in your name without your action.

1. 1 Start a test in your workspace and pick the domain you want to test. You get a list of seed addresses and a short test code.
2. 2 Send your real message (the same template, sending tool and From address you use for customers) to the seed list, with the code in the subject or body.
3. 3 We read each seed mailbox and record whether the message reached the inbox, a secondary tab, the spam folder, or did not arrive.
4. 4 Results appear per provider within minutes, with an overall placement percentage and the authentication results the receivers recorded.

Reading the result

One test is a snapshot. Placement moves with reputation, so the trend matters more than any single run. Tests are stored with your history, and a drop from 94 percent to 71 percent at Outlook since Tuesday is the kind of change you can act on before revenue follows it.

How to get a fair result

A placement test is only as good as the message you send. Testing a plain text draft from your laptop says little about a designed campaign sent through your ESP. Send the real thing, from the real tool, with the real From address and links.

Keep the seed list in a separate send, not hidden inside a large campaign, so the timing matches. Do not add the seed addresses to your regular lists either, because engagement on those mailboxes is not the same as engagement from real customers. If you send from several domains or tools, run one test per combination, since a newsletter tool and a CRM can place very differently with the same content. Then compare results over weeks, not hours.

Placement next to the rest of your signals

Placement tests are most useful when you can see the cause in the same place. A spam result next to a fresh Spamhaus DBL listing of a link domain explains itself. So does a spam result at Gmail next to a spam rate of 0.25 percent in Postmaster Tools. That is why tests sit inside email deliverability monitoring, alongside blacklist monitoring, DMARC reports and reputation signals.

For a quick free look at your DNS setup before you test placement, use the email deliverability test. It checks SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX, PTR and blacklists without sending anything.

Tests included per plan

Inbox placement tests are counted per month and reset with each billing period. Deleting a test does not give it back.

When to run a placement test

Agencies often run one test per client per week and include the result in a white label deliverability report, which turns a technical number into something a client understands.

• Before a large campaign or a seasonal peak such as Black Friday.
• After changing ESP, sending IP, DKIM key or DNS records.
• When warming a new domain or IP, to see each provider accept you.
• After a blacklist removal, to confirm mail flows again.
• Weekly on your main template, so a slow reputation slide shows up early.

Frequently asked questions