All Collections
Deliverability
Getting Started with Deliverability Success
Getting Started with Deliverability Success

Follow this checklist to reach your subscribers' inboxes right off the bat!

Updated over a week ago

Welcome to the ConvertKit family! We couldn’t be more excited to have you join us. Part of our vision is for creators to make $1,000,000,000 using ConvertKit. In other words, we care a lot that you’re successful. To be successful in email marketing, it’s very important that you have great email deliverability.

We recommend taking the steps below to ensure you start out at ConvertKit with successful deliverability:

1. Only import subscribers who have given you direct permission to send them email marketing

Permission is everything when it comes to email deliverability. One of the fastest ways to hurt your deliverability is to email people who don’t actually want to be on your list. Before you import subscribers, be sure that everyone on the list gave clear consent to be there and have been engaged in the last 12 months. This will help give you a really strong start!

2. Import and cancel your previous unsubscribes, bounces, and spam complaints

You’ll want to be sure you don’t accidentally send to any Subscriber who previously unsubscribed, bounced, or complained about your messages. Doing so could damage your sender reputation which will cause your deliverability to decline. We recommend importing these subscribers and tagging them as “Suppression List”. Then, reach out to us so we can bulk cancel everyone in this tag for you.

3. Ramp up your sending by starting with your most engaged subscribers

If you’re able to get historic engagement data from your previous Email Service Provider (ESP), you can boost your sender reputation by sending to your most engaged subscribers first. Here’s an example ramp up plan you could follow:

4. Secure all of your forms with double opt-in and/or reCaptcha

This step is crucial for protecting your deliverability. One of the most common causes of deliverability issues is listbombing. When this occurs, subscribers are added to your list that didn’t actually sign up to be there, which causes spam complaints to increase and deliverability to decline. Protect yourself from listbombing by securing your forms with double opt-in and or reCaptcha.

5. Know what to expect

Any time something changes about the way you send email, your sender reputation is reset. Because you’re moving to a different ESP, mailbox providers will need to re-evaluate how they score your messages. During this re-evaluation period, it’s normal to see open rates temporarily decrease or increase. Following the steps above will help to shorten this re-evaluation period and encourage mailbox providers to send your emails to your subscribers’ inboxes.

6. If your domain has a DMARC record, be sure to set up a Verified Sending Domain

If you have no clue what any of this means -- no worries! This is an advanced topic. DMARC is a strict security setting and in order for ConvertKit emails to pass DMARC, you’ll need to set up a Verified Sending Domain. You can check to see if your domain is using DMARC here: https://mxtoolbox.com/DMARC.aspx


If you need any help following the steps above, don't hesitate to reach out to our Support team! To learn more about deliverability, check out this article on Deliverability 101.

Did this answer your question?