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Email Deliverability Audit Checklist for engineering and QA teams
Use this email deliverability audit checklist to validate auth, spam risk, inbox placement, and release readiness before sending.
Use with your tools
You've checked the template, but will the email arrive where customers can find it? Work through this checklist to inspect authentication, content and inbox placement using the message your system actually sends.
Quick checklist
- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records pass and are aligned.
- DNS changes are propagated and validated.
- Message headers and sender identity are consistent.
- Spam-risk checks pass for top-priority templates.
- Inbox placement checks pass for critical flows.
- Links, images, HTML, and tracking parameters survive the final send path.
- The delivered message renders in supported client and device contexts when layout or dark mode matters.
- Retry, rollback, and incident ownership paths are documented.
Technical checks
Workflow checks
- Email Audit
- Free Email Render
- Device previews
- Email spam checker
- Inbox placement test
- Email deliverability test
Evidence to keep
For each audited send, keep enough evidence to understand what changed and who owns the next action:
- sender domain, subdomain, provider, and return path
- SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX results
- spam-risk and header findings from the final delivered message
- inbox placement result for important providers
- rendered-message review for links, images, layout, and dark mode
- release owner, remediation owner, and retest date
Use Campaign Probe for continuous email quality monitoring when the same campaign, lifecycle stream, or product notification needs recurring checks.
Escalation model
- Block launch if auth checks fail on production domains.
- Block launch if critical templates fail inbox placement checks.
- Block launch if links, images, or rendered content break the user action.
- Route failures to a named owner with target remediation window.
What to do next
Run an email deliverability test with your final message and save the results beside this checklist. If you find a problem, use Email Audit to inspect content and links, or Device previews to check the delivered design. Domain Monitor and Campaign Probe help you repeat the relevant checks as records and recurring messages change.