DEEP DIVE
Good Email Deliverability Starts BEFORE You Press Send
You can have a clean email setup, a newsletter that looks great and a contact list that keeps growing…
…And still struggle to reach the inbox.
Sometimes the content and the sending infrastructure are fine. The problem is how people get onto your list.
Yet this is easy to miss when you use a CRM or marketing automation platform like HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, or another ESP.
Here's what the typical setup looks like:
You build a signup form → Connect it to your CRM/ESP → Create a welcome sequence → Start collecting leads from lead magnet (YT, Linkedin, Ads, etc..)
Everything looks like it works. Isn’t it?
But what happens when your form starts attracting bots?
When people enter invalid email addresses?
When contacts keep receiving automated emails months after they stopped engaging?
Problems like these can hurt your email performance for a long time before anyone notices.
🪄 Here are the 4 places to check:
1. Your signup form
An unprotected signup form is one of the easiest sources of deliverability problems to overlook.
Remove CAPTCHA or other bot protection, and automated submissions can flow straight into your database.
Warning signs to look for:
Large groups of contacts with random-looking names:
Multiple registrations with blank or unusual personal details
Clusters of signups appearing within short periods
An increase in invalid email addresses
Contacts who never open, click or otherwise engage
Now, not every unusual contact is a bot. Some people deliberately enter incomplete or fake details.
But patterns across your database deserve your attention.
How to fix this?
Bring signup protection back with a tool like Cloudflare Turnstile (where your form integration supports it). If you are using WordPress, it has a lot of plugins like Akismet that cut off of bots.
2. Your CRM might be keeping contacts you should no longer email
Collecting leads is only half the job.
You also need a process for maintaining your database.
Many businesses automatically remove unsubscribed contacts, but pay much less attention to bounced addresses and subscribers who haven't engaged for months.
Over time, you end up with a database full of people who can't receive your emails…
People who no longer use their address…
And people who have simply lost interest.
What to review first:
Hard bounces that should be suppressed
Repeated soft bounces that need further attention
Contacts who haven't engaged in 90 or 180 days
Unusual signup clusters that may point to automated activity
One warning: don't automatically delete every inactive subscriber.
Run a re-engagement campaign first. Then suppress the contacts who stay unresponsive.
3. Your old automations might still be sending emails
This matters most if you've used HubSpot, ActiveCampaign or another platform for several years.
What usually happens.
You create a welcome sequence or lead-nurture campaign for a specific offer. The campaign does its job…
…But nobody ever reviews the automation.
Now contacts keep receiving emails long after the original reason for subscribing has passed.
Review your automations regularly and ask:
Who is entering each workflow?
How often are they receiving emails?
Are inactive contacts still included?
Are bounced and unsubscribed contacts excluded?
Is the content still relevant to why they subscribed?
An automation that runs indefinitely without proper entry and exit rules becomes a liability.
4. Sending more emails won't necessarily fix the problem
When engagement drops, the temptation is to send more campaigns, increase volume or try a warm-up tool.
But if your database contains invalid addresses, unengaged subscribers or questionable signups, more volume can make things WORSE.
Instead, start with the people who recently opened or clicked.
Then expand your audience gradually. Keep an eye on complaint rates, bounce rates and engagement as you go.
And pay attention to Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft separately.
Their filtering systems and reporting tools are different. So good performance with one provider doesn't mean you're reaching the inbox everywhere.
A simple exercise you can do today
Here's exactly what to do:
Step 1: Export your CRM contacts and sort them by signup date.
Look for unusual clusters of registrations, blank or suspicious names, and sudden increases in new contacts.
Step 2: Review your active automations.
Find out whether people who subscribed months ago are still receiving the same sequence.
Step 3: Check your bounce and complaint data.
These signals show whether the problem comes from list quality, sending practices or something else.
That's it
You don't necessarily need a new email platform, a different domain or another expensive deliverability tool.
Sometimes you just need to fix the way your existing system collects and manages contacts.
Good email deliverability starts before you press Send.
If this is helpful, hit reply and let me know.
Pavel
