99.8% Email Delivery Rate, How Visisto Keeps You Out of Spam

Visisto is the complete website growth system that maintains a 99.8% email delivery rate across all plans. Most email service providers don't publish their delivery rate, because it's not impressive. This article explains exactly how Visisto keeps your emails out of spam: the authentication protocols, the infrastructure decisions, and the practices you need to follow.

Why deliverability matters more than features

An email that lands in spam is worse than an email never sent. It damages your sender reputation, trains ISP filters against you, and erodes trust with the recipients who do find it in their junk folder. Here's the real cost:

• 95% delivery rate: 500 emails lost per 10,000 sent. At £0.84 revenue per email, that's £420 lost per campaign.
• 98% delivery rate: 200 emails lost per 10,000 sent. £168 lost per campaign.
• 99.8% delivery rate (Visisto): 20 emails lost per 10,000 sent. £16.80 lost per campaign.

Over a year of weekly broadcasts, the difference between 95% and 99.8% delivery is £21,008 in revenue. That's why we obsess over deliverability before features.

The three authentication protocols you need

Since February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo require bulk senders (5,000+ emails/day) to authenticate with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. Without all three, your emails go to spam. Period.

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)

DKIM adds a cryptographic signature to your emails proving they were sent by an authorised server. Think of it as a wax seal on a letter. Visisto generates your DKIM key automatically during setup, you add one DNS record and you're authenticated.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

SPF tells receiving servers which IP addresses are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain. Without SPF, anyone can spoof your domain. Visisto provides the exact SPF record to add, one TXT record in your DNS.

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance)

DMARC builds on DKIM and SPF by telling ISPs what to do when authentication fails: none (report only), quarantine (send to spam), or reject (block entirely). Start with "none" to monitor, then move to "quarantine" after 30 days of clean reports.

IP warm-up: the patience tax

New sending domains and IPs have no reputation. ISPs treat unknown senders as suspicious. The solution is warm-up: gradually increasing send volume over 2, 4 weeks to build trust.

• Week 1: 50, 200 emails/day to your most engaged contacts (opened in last 30 days)
• Week 2: 500, 1,000 emails/day, expanding to 60-day engaged
• Week 3: 2,000, 5,000 emails/day, expanding to full active list
• Week 4: Full volume, all active subscribers

Visisto automates this entire schedule. When you connect a new domain, the system throttles your sends automatically and gradually increases volume. No manual pacing required.

List hygiene: the silent reputation killer

Sending to invalid, inactive, or spam-trap addresses destroys your sender reputation. Visisto handles this automatically:

• Hard bounce suppression: Automatically suppressed after first bounce. Never sent to again.
• Soft bounce retry: Retried 3 times over 72 hours, then suppressed.
• Complaint handling: Contacts who mark you as spam are instantly suppressed.
• Inactive suppression: Contacts with no opens/clicks in 180 days are flagged for re-engagement or removal.
• Spam trap detection: Known spam trap patterns are filtered during import.

Our delivery rate on Mailchimp was 93%. We weren't doing anything wrong, their shared IP had a bad reputation from other senders. Moved to Visisto, delivery went to 99.6% in the first month.

Infrastructure decisions that protect your reputation

• Dedicated IP pools: Your sends don't share IPs with spammy senders. Shared IP platforms (Mailchimp, Sendinblue) can tank your delivery because of other users' behaviour.
• Smart throttling: Send rate adapts in real time based on ISP feedback signals. If Gmail starts deferring, Visisto slows down automatically.
• Feedback loop integration: Visisto processes ISP feedback loops (FBLs) from Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and AOL. Complaints are handled within minutes, not hours.
• TLS encryption: All emails sent over TLS. Required by most ISPs, ignored by many budget ESPs.
• Reputation monitoring: Real-time sender score tracking visible in your dashboard. Get alerts before issues become problems.

The 5 things killing your deliverability right now

1. Missing DMARC record: 61% of domains sending bulk email still don't have DMARC. Gmail now filters these more aggressively.
2. Purchased or scraped lists: Spam trap hit rate on purchased lists averages 5, 8%. One campaign to a purchased list can blacklist your domain for months.
3. No warm-up: Sending 10,000 emails on day one with a new domain. ISPs flag this as spam immediately.
4. Ignoring bounces: Continuing to send to hard-bounced addresses. Each bounce worsens your reputation.
5. Shared IP platform: Your neighbour's spam campaigns affect your inbox placement. You have no control.

The bottom line

Email deliverability isn't sexy, but it's the foundation everything else depends on. The best subject line, the most compelling offer, and the most beautiful template are worthless if they land in spam.

Visisto maintains a 99.8% delivery rate through automatic DKIM configuration, automated IP warm-up, real-time bounce handling, dedicated IP pools, and smart throttling. We publish this number because we're confident in it. Ask your current ESP for theirs, if they won't share it, that's your answer.

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC explained without the jargon

Three DNS records control whether your marketing emails land in the inbox or the spam folder. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a record that lists which mail servers are authorised to send email on behalf of your domain. Without it, receiving servers treat your email as potentially spoofed. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is a cryptographic signature added to each email that proves it was not tampered with in transit. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) combines SPF and DKIM into a policy that tells receiving servers what to do with emails that fail both checks — reject them, quarantine them, or let them through. All three must be correctly configured to maximise deliverability.

List hygiene: the deliverability factor most marketers ignore

Your sending reputation is determined partly by how your list behaves, not just by your technical setup. Sending to a list with more than 2% hard bounce rate triggers automatic throttling from every major ESP. A spam complaint rate above 0.1% puts your entire sending domain at risk of blacklisting. The fix is systematic list hygiene: remove hard bounces immediately, suppress contacts who have not opened in 180 days (with a re-engagement campaign first), and never purchase or rent email lists. Visisto automatically suppresses hard bounces, tracks engagement per contact, and surfaces unengaged segments for re-engagement or suppression.

Custom sender domains and why they matter for deliverability

Sending from a shared ESP domain (like @em.klaviyo.com or @mail.mailchimp.com) means your deliverability is partially determined by the behaviour of thousands of other senders on that domain. If another sender on the shared infrastructure generates spam complaints, it can affect your inbox placement. Custom sender domains — sending from @yourbrand.com or @email.yourbrand.com — isolate your sending reputation completely. Your deliverability reflects only your own list quality and sending behaviour. Visisto supports custom sender domains on all plans with guided DNS setup that configures SPF, DKIM, and DMARC automatically.

Warming a new sending domain: the process that protects deliverability

When you configure a new custom sender domain, you cannot immediately send to your full list. ISPs (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) assess new sending domains based on the first 2–4 weeks of sending behaviour, and a large initial send to a cold list signals spam. The correct warming process is: week 1, send to your 200 most engaged contacts (opened in the last 30 days). Week 2, expand to your top 2,000 by engagement. Week 3, expand to your top 10,000. Week 4 onwards, send to your full list. Each week's sends should show open rates above 20% and spam complaint rates below 0.05%. Visisto's domain warming feature automates this process: configure your full list and Visisto handles the graduated sending schedule automatically.

Re-engagement campaigns: how to clean your list without losing it

Sending to contacts who have not opened in 180 days damages your sender reputation because unengaged contacts are more likely to mark as spam and less likely to open. The standard practice is a three-step re-engagement sequence: email 1 acknowledges the silence and asks if the subscriber still wants to hear from you, email 2 (sent 7 days later if email 1 was not opened) offers a strong incentive to re-engage, email 3 (sent 7 days after email 2 if not opened) confirms the subscriber will be removed from the list in 7 days. Contacts who do not engage with any of the three emails should be suppressed. This process typically removes 15–30% of a large list, but the remaining list will be dramatically more engaged — and your deliverability metrics will improve within two sending cycles.