Field notes · ~1 post / week

Writing about sending, deliverability, and the rules providers actually enforce.

Practical guides, post-mortems from real sends, and plain-English explanations of why your list quality is doing what it is doing. No fluff, no AI slop, no gated PDFs — just our working notes.

2026

Newest first · 9 of 72 shown

The Complete Guide to Email Authentication: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and BIMI

Authentication does not replace list hygiene, but it is part of the same deliverability foundation.

authenticationdeliverabilitydns

How to Handle Unknown Email Validation Results

A practical framework for deciding what to do with addresses that land in the unknown bucket.

email-validationverify-listlist-cleaning

Email List Segmentation by Validation Status

Why deliverable, risky, undeliverable, and unknown segments should not all be treated the same way.

verify-listsegmentationdeliverability

Email Verification for Outbound Sales Teams: Protect Your Domain

Prospecting data is noisy. Domain reputation is fragile. That combination makes pre-send cleanup especially important.

outbound-salesdeliverabilityverify-list

How to Clean an Email List: A Step-by-Step Guide

A five-step process for turning a raw list into something safer to send.

list-cleaningverify-listdeliverability

How to Tell if an Email Address Is Fake

Some fake addresses are obvious. The more useful ones are the problems that only show up once you check them properly.

verify-emailemail-validationfake-emails

Why Double Opt-In Is Worth the Tradeoff

Smaller and cleaner usually beats larger and noisy when the goal is long-term deliverability.

double-opt-insignup-qualitydeliverability

How Gmail and Outlook Decide if Your Email Goes to Spam

A practical guide to the signals inbox providers use and the parts you can actually control.

deliverabilitysender-reputationgmail

How to Reduce Spam Complaints on Your Email Campaigns

Spam complaints are usually a sign of mismatch: wrong audience, wrong expectation, or too much friction to leave cleanly.

spam-complaintsdeliverabilitylist-cleaning