Check Your Email Authentication Settings First
Most HubSpot users skip the authentication setup and wonder why their emails never reach inboxes. Email authentication tells receiving servers that you’re actually authorized to send emails from your domain, not an imposter.
HubSpot requires three authentication protocols: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Without all three properly configured, inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook treat your emails with suspicion.
Here’s the critical part most guides miss: even if HubSpot shows your domain as ‘connected,’ that doesn’t mean authentication is complete. You need to verify each protocol individually in your DNS records.
Setting Up SPF Records
Navigate to your domain registrar’s DNS management panel. You’re looking for TXT records that start with ‘v=spf1’.
Add HubSpot’s sending servers to your SPF record by including ‘include:_spf.hubspotemail.net’. Your complete SPF record should look like: ‘v=spf1 include:_spf.hubspotemail.net ~all’.
The ‘~all’ at the end is a soft fail policy, meaning emails that don’t match will be marked suspicious but not rejected outright. Some experts recommend ‘-all’ for hard fail, but this creates a trade-off: you’ll have better authentication but risk legitimate emails bouncing if your SPF record has any errors.
Configuring DKIM Authentication
In HubSpot, go to Settings > Website > Email > Connect an Email Sending Domain. Follow the prompts to generate your DKIM keys.
HubSpot will provide you with specific CNAME records to add to your DNS. These typically look like ‘hs1._domainkey.yourdomain.com’ and ‘hs2._domainkey.yourdomain.com’.
Copy these records exactly as provided. A single character error will break DKIM authentication completely, and you won’t get a helpful error message—your emails will just quietly land in spam folders.
Implementing DMARC Policy
DMARC is where most HubSpot users fail because it requires understanding policy decisions, not just copying records. Create a TXT record for ‘_dmarc.yourdomain.com’ with a policy that tells receiving servers what to do with emails that fail authentication.
Start with a monitoring-only policy: ‘v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:youremail@domain.com’. This collects data without affecting delivery for typically 2-4 weeks.
After reviewing your DMARC reports and confirming legitimate emails pass authentication, upgrade to ‘p=quarantine’ or ‘p=reject’. The trade-off here is significant: stricter policies improve deliverability for authenticated emails but will cause any misconfigured sending sources to fail completely.
What Most Guides Get Wrong About Email Content
The conventional advice says avoid spam trigger words like ‘free’ and ‘urgent.’ That’s outdated thinking from 2010.
Modern spam filters use machine learning models that analyze hundreds of signals simultaneously. A single word doesn’t trigger spam classification—patterns do.
The real content issues that send HubSpot emails to spam are structural, not lexical. Here’s what actually matters in practice.
HTML-to-Text Ratio Problems
Spam filters flag emails with excessive HTML code relative to actual text content. HubSpot’s drag-and-drop email builder can generate bloated HTML if you’re not careful.
Keep your HTML-to-text ratio below 60% HTML. This means for every 100 characters of visible text, you should have no more than 150 characters of HTML markup.
Test this by viewing your email’s source code in HubSpot. If you see massive style blocks, nested tables, or inline CSS repeated throughout, you have a problem.
Image-Heavy Emails Without Alt Text
Sending an email that’s primarily images with minimal text is a reliable way to trigger spam filters. Spam filters can’t read images, so an image-heavy email looks like you’re trying to hide spammy content.
Follow the 80/20 rule: at least 80% text content, maximum 20% images by visual weight. Every image needs descriptive alt text that contributes to your total text count.
The failure mode here appears when marketers create beautiful designed emails in Photoshop, export as images, and embed them in HubSpot. These emails consistently land in spam regardless of authentication because they appear contentless to filters.
Broken Links and Redirects
Every link in your HubSpot email gets wrapped in a tracking redirect through HubSpot’s servers. If any of your destination URLs are broken, redirect chains exist, or landing pages load slowly, spam filters downgrade your sender reputation.
Before sending, click every link in your test email and verify: the destination loads in under 3 seconds, there’s only one redirect (HubSpot’s tracking), and the landing page domain matches your sending domain or is a recognized brand.
This matters because spam filters follow your links in real-time. A link to a flagged domain, even if your content is legitimate, will contaminate your email’s reputation score.
Fix Your Contact List Quality Issues
Your contact list quality directly impacts whether HubSpot emails reach inboxes. This works through engagement metrics that inbox providers track religiously.
When you send to contacts who never open, never click, or worse—mark as spam—inbox providers learn that your emails aren’t wanted. They’ll increasingly filter your messages to spam, even for engaged contacts.
The second-order effect most marketers miss: poor list quality doesn’t just hurt the current campaign. It damages your sending domain’s reputation for typically 3-6 months, affecting every email you send from HubSpot during that period.
Remove Unengaged Contacts Systematically
Create a HubSpot list of contacts who haven’t opened any email in the last 90 days. This is your at-risk segment.
Send a re-engagement campaign to this list with a clear subject line like ‘Should we keep sending you emails?’ Include an explicit opt-in button. Anyone who doesn’t engage with this email should be suppressed from future sends.
The trade-off here is obvious: you’re shrinking your list size. But here’s what you gain: your open rates will increase by typically 15-30%, your spam complaint rate will drop, and inbox providers will see improving engagement metrics that boost your sender reputation.
Validate Email Addresses Before Import
If you’re importing contact lists into HubSpot, you’re likely adding invalid email addresses that cause hard bounces. Hard bounces are toxic to sender reputation.
Use an email validation service before importing any list. Services like ZeroBounce or NeverBounce check for syntax errors, domain validity, and whether the mailbox actually exists.
This costs typically $0.005-$0.01 per email validated, but prevents the sender reputation damage that occurs when you send to 500 invalid addresses in a single campaign. That damage takes months to repair and affects deliverability across your entire email program.
Handle Duplicate Contacts Properly
Duplicate contacts in HubSpot create a specific deliverability problem: you might send the same email twice to one person, which triggers spam complaints. When recipients see duplicate emails from you, they’re significantly more likely to hit the spam button rather than unsubscribe.
HubSpot’s native deduplication tools help, but they’re not automatic. You need to regularly audit for duplicates based on email address, not just name. For a detailed process on managing this, see our guide on fixing duplicate contacts in HubSpot CRM.
Set up a monthly workflow that identifies and merges duplicates automatically. The boundary condition here: be careful merging contacts with different domains but similar names—these might be different people at different companies.
Optimize Your Sending Patterns and Volume
How you send matters as much as what you send. Inbox providers track sending patterns to identify spammers, who typically send in sudden bursts from new domains.
If you’re new to HubSpot or using a newly authenticated domain, you need to warm up your sending reputation gradually. Jumping straight to 10,000-recipient campaigns will trigger spam filters even if your content and authentication are perfect.
Implement Domain Warming
Start by sending to your most engaged contacts—those who’ve opened emails in the last 30 days. Send to 50-100 contacts on day one.
Double your volume every 3-4 days if you maintain open rates above 20% and spam complaint rates below 0.1%. This gradual increase signals to inbox providers that you’re a legitimate sender building an engaged audience.
The warming process typically takes 4-6 weeks to reach full sending volume. The failure mode appears when marketers get impatient and jump from 500 to 5,000 recipients overnight. Inbox providers see this spike as suspicious, and deliverability tanks.
Maintain Consistent Sending Frequency
Sporadic sending patterns trigger spam filters. If you send once in January, nothing in February, then daily in March, inbox providers can’t establish a trust pattern.
Establish a consistent schedule: weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly—whatever matches your content capacity. Stick to this schedule within a 2-day window.
This creates a trade-off for small teams: you might not have content for weekly emails. The solution isn’t to skip weeks randomly; it’s to choose a sustainable frequency from the start, even if that’s monthly.
Segment Your Sends by Engagement Level
Don’t send every email to your entire list. Create engagement-based segments in HubSpot: high engagement (opened in last 30 days), medium engagement (opened in last 90 days), and low engagement (opened in last 180 days).
Send your regular campaigns to high and medium engagement segments only. Use re-engagement campaigns specifically designed for low engagement contacts, with clearer value propositions and opt-out options.
This approach improves your aggregate engagement metrics, which inbox providers use to calculate your sender score. A 25% open rate across 5,000 engaged contacts is better for deliverability than a 15% open rate across 10,000 mixed contacts.
Configure HubSpot-Specific Deliverability Settings
HubSpot has built-in deliverability features that many users don’t configure properly. These settings directly affect whether your emails reach inboxes.
The challenge is that HubSpot’s default settings prioritize ease of use over optimal deliverability. You need to manually adjust several configurations that aren’t obvious in the interface.
Set Up a Dedicated Sending Subdomain
Instead of sending from ‘yourname@yourdomain.com’, configure a subdomain like ‘marketing.yourdomain.com’ or ‘mail.yourdomain.com’ for HubSpot emails. This isolates your marketing email reputation from your personal email reputation.
In HubSpot, go to Settings > Website > Domains & URLs > Connect a domain. Add your subdomain and complete the authentication process with the DNS records HubSpot provides.
The trade-off here is subtle: a subdomain might look slightly less personal than your main domain. But you gain the ability to experiment with sending strategies without risking your main domain’s reputation, which is used for sales emails and personal communication.
Configure Subscription Types Properly
HubSpot requires subscription types for all marketing emails. Many users create a single ‘Marketing Emails’ subscription type and use it for everything.
This is a mistake. Create specific subscription types for different content categories: newsletters, product updates, promotional offers, educational content. Allow contacts to subscribe to specific types.
Why this matters for deliverability: when contacts can choose what they receive, they’re less likely to mark emails as spam. A spam complaint is 10-100 times more damaging to sender reputation than an unsubscribe.
Enable Double Opt-In for New Contacts
HubSpot allows single opt-in by default, where someone enters their email and immediately receives marketing emails. Switch to double opt-in, which requires email confirmation before adding contacts to marketing lists.
Go to Settings > Marketing > Email > Subscriptions and enable the double opt-in requirement. This adds friction to your signup process—fewer people will complete it—but the contacts who do are verified, engaged, and significantly less likely to mark your emails as spam.
The decision heuristic here: use double opt-in if you’re running paid advertising to drive signups (where fake emails are common) or if you’re in a regulated industry. Use single opt-in only if you’re collecting emails through high-trust channels like in-person events where email validity is virtually guaranteed.
Monitor and Respond to Deliverability Metrics
You can’t fix deliverability problems you don’t measure. HubSpot provides several metrics that signal deliverability issues before they become critical.
The pattern that distinguishes experts from novices: experts watch leading indicators (bounce rates, spam complaints) that predict future problems, while novices only notice lagging indicators (declining open rates) after deliverability has already degraded.
Track Your Bounce Rate Religiously
HubSpot separates bounces into hard bounces (permanent failures like invalid addresses) and soft bounces (temporary failures like full inboxes). Your hard bounce rate should stay below 2% per campaign.
If your hard bounce rate exceeds 2%, you have a list quality problem that’s actively damaging your sender reputation. Pause new campaigns and clean your list immediately.
Check your bounce report after every send: Marketing > Email > Analyze > Bounces. HubSpot automatically suppresses hard bounces from future sends, but the damage to your reputation already occurred.
Monitor Spam Complaint Rates
Your spam complaint rate should stay below 0.1% (one complaint per 1,000 emails sent). Anything above 0.3% is a crisis that requires immediate action.
HubSpot shows spam complaints in your email analytics, but this number is incomplete. Many inbox providers don’t report spam complaints back to senders, so your actual complaint rate is typically 3-5 times higher than what HubSpot shows.
If you’re seeing any spam complaints in HubSpot, assume your real rate is in the danger zone. Immediately review the content and targeting of that campaign to identify what went wrong.
Analyze Engagement Trends Over Time
Open rates and click rates aren’t just vanity metrics—inbox providers use engagement data to determine whether your emails belong in the inbox or spam folder. Declining engagement predicts future deliverability problems.
Create a spreadsheet tracking your open rate, click rate, and spam complaint rate for every campaign. Calculate a 30-day rolling average for each metric.
If your 30-day average open rate declines by more than 20% relative to your baseline (e.g., from 25% to 20%), you have an emerging deliverability problem. This is your signal to audit authentication, list quality, and content before the situation worsens.
Fix Your Cold Email Setup If You’re Using HubSpot for Outbound
Many teams use HubSpot Marketing Hub for cold outbound emails. This is technically against HubSpot’s acceptable use policy and creates severe deliverability risks.
HubSpot’s infrastructure is optimized for permission-based marketing to contacts who opted in. When you send cold emails through Marketing Hub, you’re mixing cold outbound (low engagement, high spam risk) with warm marketing (high engagement, low spam risk) on the same sending domain.
The result: your cold emails damage the sender reputation used for all your marketing emails. This is the fastest way to destroy deliverability across your entire email program.
Separate Cold Email from Marketing Email
If you’re doing cold outreach, use a different platform and domain than your HubSpot marketing emails. Tools like Lemlist or Smartlead are purpose-built for cold email with appropriate sending limits and domain rotation.
Set up a separate subdomain specifically for cold outreach (like ‘outreach.yourdomain.com’) that’s completely isolated from your marketing subdomain. If the cold domain gets flagged, your marketing emails remain unaffected.
For more details on properly structuring cold email infrastructure, see our guide on fixing your cold email marketing setup.
Use HubSpot Sales Hub for One-to-One Outreach
If you must use HubSpot for outbound, use Sales Hub’s one-to-one emails or sequences, not Marketing Hub’s bulk email tool. Sales Hub emails are sent from individual user inboxes (like Gmail or Outlook connected to HubSpot), not HubSpot’s shared infrastructure.
This approach has different deliverability dynamics: you’re limited by your personal email provider’s sending limits (typically 500-2,000 per day for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365), but you’re using your personal email reputation, which starts with higher trust.
The trade-off is scale: you can’t send to 10,000 contacts at once through Sales Hub. But for cold outbound, this is actually beneficial—sending at high volume to cold contacts is precisely what triggers spam filters.
When HubSpot Marketing Hub Is the Wrong Choice for Email
HubSpot isn’t the optimal email platform for every use case. Understanding when to use a different tool prevents deliverability problems that stem from platform mismatch.
The boundary condition that matters: HubSpot Marketing Hub excels at permission-based marketing to engaged contacts who opted in. It struggles with high-volume transactional emails, cold outbound, or situations requiring extreme deliverability control.
High-Volume Transactional Emails
If you’re sending order confirmations, password resets, or shipping notifications—emails triggered by user actions that must be delivered immediately—HubSpot Marketing Hub isn’t the right tool. These transactional emails should use dedicated infrastructure like SendGrid or Amazon SES.
Transactional emails require different deliverability optimization than marketing emails. They need guaranteed delivery speed (under 5 seconds), different authentication strategies, and separation from marketing sending reputation.
Mixing transactional and marketing emails on the same domain creates a specific failure mode: if your marketing campaigns have deliverability issues, your critical transactional emails (like password resets) will also land in spam.
Organizations with Complex Compliance Requirements
If you’re in healthcare (HIPAA), finance (SOX), or operate in regions with strict data residency requirements, HubSpot’s shared infrastructure might not meet your compliance needs. You need more control over where emails are sent from, how data is stored, and who has access.
In these cases, self-hosted email platforms or dedicated sending infrastructure give you the control necessary for compliance, even though they require significantly more technical expertise to maintain deliverability.
Teams Requiring Advanced Deliverability Features
HubSpot provides solid deliverability features for most users, but lacks advanced capabilities that sophisticated email programs need: dedicated IP addresses, custom bounce handling, integration with reputation monitoring services, or detailed SMTP logs.
If you’re sending more than 100,000 emails per month or need granular control over sending infrastructure, enterprise email platforms like SparkPost or self-managed solutions provide capabilities HubSpot doesn’t offer.
Build a Systematic Deliverability Audit Process
Deliverability isn’t a one-time fix—it requires ongoing monitoring and optimization. Create a systematic audit process you run monthly to catch problems early.
This approach prevents the common failure mode where deliverability gradually degrades over months without anyone noticing until open rates have dropped by 50% and recovery takes 6+ months.
Monthly Authentication Check
Use a tool like MXToolbox to verify your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are still correctly configured. DNS records sometimes break due to hosting changes, domain transfers, or accidental deletions.
Check each sending domain and subdomain you use with HubSpot. Run tests for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC separately and verify all three pass.
This takes about 10 minutes per month and catches configuration drift before it causes deliverability problems.
Quarterly List Hygiene Review
Every quarter, analyze your contact engagement in HubSpot. Create lists for contacts who haven’t engaged in 90 days, 180 days, and 365 days.
Suppress the 365-day non-engaged contacts from all marketing emails. Send re-engagement campaigns to the 180-day segment with clear opt-out options.
Calculate the percentage of your total list that’s engaged (opened or clicked in the last 90 days). If this drops below 30%, you have a list quality problem that’s affecting deliverability.
Seed List Testing
Create a seed list with email addresses from major inbox providers: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Apple Mail, and any industry-specific providers your audience uses. Include these as contacts in HubSpot.
Before sending major campaigns, send a test to your seed list and manually check where the email lands: inbox, promotions tab, or spam folder. This gives you real-world deliverability data before sending to your full list.
If your test emails land in spam for any major provider, pause the campaign and diagnose the issue before sending to thousands of contacts.
Improve Your Email Content Strategy for Better Engagement
Technical deliverability fixes only work if people actually want your emails. Engagement metrics (opens, clicks, time spent reading) signal to inbox providers that your emails are valuable.
The contrarian insight here: improving content quality is a deliverability tactic, not just a marketing tactic. Better content drives higher engagement, which directly improves inbox placement.
Write Subject Lines That Match Email Content
Clickbait subject lines that don’t match your email content create a specific deliverability problem: people open the email, immediately close it (low read time), and often mark it as spam out of frustration. These negative engagement signals hurt your sender reputation.
Write subject lines that accurately preview your email content. If your email is about a product update, say ‘Product Update: New Features in [Product Name]’ rather than ‘You won’t believe what we just launched.’
The trade-off: accurate subject lines might have lower open rates initially. But over time, you train your audience that your emails deliver on their promises, which builds trust and improves long-term engagement metrics that matter for deliverability.
Segment Content by Audience Interest
Sending the same email to your entire list guarantees that a large portion of recipients find it irrelevant. Irrelevant emails drive deletions without reading, which signals to inbox providers that your emails aren’t valuable.
Use HubSpot’s list segmentation to send different content to different audience segments based on their behavior, properties, or lifecycle stage. Someone in the awareness stage needs different content than someone evaluating your product.
If you’re using HubSpot for account-based marketing, this segmentation becomes even more critical. For strategies on structuring your HubSpot data for targeted campaigns, see our guide on using HubSpot CRM for account-based marketing.
Optimize Email Length and Formatting
Extremely long emails (over 1,000 words) or extremely short emails (under 50 words) both correlate with lower engagement and higher spam placement. Aim for 200-500 words for most marketing emails.
Use short paragraphs (2-3 sentences), bullet points, and clear calls-to-action. Make your emails skimmable—most people won’t read every word, but they should be able to extract value by skimming.
Include a clear, singular call-to-action. Emails with 5+ different links and CTAs confuse readers and dilute engagement metrics. One clear action drives higher click rates, which improves your sender reputation.
Build Your Email List the Right Way from the Start
Many deliverability problems originate from how you acquired email addresses in the first place. Purchased lists, scraped contacts, or aggressive signup tactics create audiences that never wanted your emails.
The fundamental principle: permission-based email marketing requires explicit, informed consent. Every shortcut around this principle creates deliverability problems that compound over time.
Use Opt-In Forms with Clear Value Propositions
Your email signup forms should clearly explain what people will receive and how often. Vague promises like ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ convert better than specific descriptions, but they attract unengaged subscribers.
Instead, write specific value propositions: ‘Get weekly email marketing tips delivered every Tuesday’ or ‘Receive monthly product updates and exclusive feature previews.’ This sets clear expectations that reduce future spam complaints.
Place signup forms strategically on high-intent pages: blog posts, pricing pages, and product pages. Avoid aggressive popups that appear within 5 seconds of page load—these capture emails from people who haven’t yet determined if they’re interested in your content.
Never Buy Email Lists
Purchased email lists are universally bad for deliverability, even if the vendor claims the contacts opted in. These contacts didn’t opt in to receive emails from your specific company, so they’ll treat your emails as spam.
The math doesn’t work: a purchased list of 10,000 contacts might cost $500-$2,000, but the sender reputation damage from high spam complaints and low engagement will cost you months of deliverability problems affecting your entire email program.
Build your list organically, even if it’s slower. A list of 500 engaged, opted-in contacts delivers better results and maintains better deliverability than a purchased list of 10,000 cold contacts.
Validate Email Collection Methods
If you’re collecting emails through multiple channels—website forms, events, partnerships, content downloads—audit each source’s quality separately in HubSpot. Create source-specific properties so you can track engagement by acquisition channel.
After 90 days, analyze which sources produce engaged contacts (high open rates, low spam complaints) and which produce unengaged contacts. Double down on high-quality sources and eliminate or fix low-quality sources.
For detailed strategies on collecting high-quality emails across different channels, see our guide on how to collect emails for email marketing.
FAQ
How long does it take to fix HubSpot email deliverability issues?
If you’re fixing authentication issues (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), you’ll see improvements within 1-2 weeks once DNS records are properly configured. List quality improvements take longer—typically 4-6 weeks of consistent sending to engaged contacts before inbox providers recognize the improved engagement patterns.
Severe reputation damage from high spam complaints or bounce rates can take 3-6 months to fully recover. This is why monitoring and prevention are critical—recovery takes much longer than prevention.
Can I use HubSpot Marketing Hub for cold email outreach?
Technically you can, but you shouldn’t. HubSpot’s acceptable use policy prohibits sending emails to contacts who haven’t given explicit permission. More importantly, cold email has different deliverability requirements than permission-based marketing.
Cold outreach needs dedicated infrastructure, separate domains, and specialized sending patterns that HubSpot Marketing Hub isn’t designed for. Use HubSpot Sales Hub for small-scale outreach or dedicated cold email platforms for larger campaigns.
What’s the ideal email list size for good deliverability in HubSpot?
List size doesn’t determine deliverability—engagement quality does. A highly engaged list of 1,000 contacts will have better deliverability than a disengaged list of 100,000 contacts.
Focus on engagement metrics instead: aim for at least 20% open rates and keep spam complaint rates below 0.1%. If you maintain these metrics, your list size can scale without deliverability problems.
Should I use a dedicated IP address for HubSpot email sending?
HubSpot Marketing Hub uses shared IP addresses for most customers, and this is actually beneficial for small to medium senders. Shared IPs have established reputations, and HubSpot manages the overall reputation across all senders.
Dedicated IPs are only necessary if you’re sending more than 100,000 emails per month consistently. Below that volume, you don’t generate enough data for inbox providers to establish a reliable reputation for your dedicated IP, and you’re better off on HubSpot’s shared infrastructure.
How do I know if my HubSpot emails are going to spam?
Check your email analytics in HubSpot for warning signs: open rates below 15%, bounce rates above 2%, any spam complaints, or declining engagement trends over time. These metrics indicate deliverability problems.
Use seed list testing by sending to test accounts on Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo before major campaigns. Manually check where emails land. Also monitor your DMARC reports, which show authentication failures that correlate with spam placement.
What’s the difference between soft bounces and hard bounces in HubSpot?
Hard bounces are permanent delivery failures—the email address doesn’t exist, the domain is invalid, or the recipient server has permanently rejected your emails. HubSpot automatically suppresses hard bounces from future sends.
Soft bounces are temporary failures—the recipient’s inbox is full, their server is temporarily unavailable, or the email was too large. HubSpot will retry soft bounces several times before converting them to hard bounces if they continue failing.
Hard bounces damage your sender reputation significantly more than soft bounces. Keep your hard bounce rate below 2% per campaign.
Can I recover from being blacklisted while using HubSpot?
If your sending domain gets blacklisted, recovery is possible but takes time. First, identify which blacklist you’re on using tools like MXToolbox. Each blacklist has its own removal process.
Fix the underlying issues that caused blacklisting—typically poor list quality, high spam complaints, or authentication problems. Then request delisting through the blacklist’s removal process, which can take 1-4 weeks.
During recovery, consider using a new subdomain for HubSpot sending while your main domain reputation recovers. This isolates the damage and allows you to continue email marketing with better practices.
How often should I clean my HubSpot email list?
Run a basic list hygiene process monthly: remove hard bounces and suppress contacts who haven’t engaged in 365+ days. Do a deeper quarterly review where you segment by engagement levels and send re-engagement campaigns to contacts who haven’t opened in 180 days.
Before major campaigns or launches, do a targeted clean of your sending list. Remove any contacts who’ve never engaged with your emails—sending to perpetually unengaged contacts is the fastest way to damage deliverability.
Does using HubSpot’s email templates affect deliverability?
HubSpot’s default templates are generally well-coded for deliverability, but customizations can create problems. If you add excessive custom HTML, large images, or complex styling, you can create HTML-to-text ratio issues or bloated code that triggers spam filters.
Stick to HubSpot’s drag-and-drop editor rather than custom HTML when possible. If you must use custom code, validate it with email testing tools to ensure it renders properly and doesn’t include spam-triggering elements.
What’s the best time to send emails from HubSpot for better deliverability?
Send time affects engagement more than deliverability directly, but higher engagement improves deliverability over time. For B2B audiences, Tuesday through Thursday between 9 AM and 11 AM in the recipient’s timezone typically performs best.
More important than optimal timing is consistent timing. If you always send on Tuesday mornings, your engaged subscribers learn to expect your emails then, which improves open rates and engagement metrics that boost deliverability.