Deliverability Consulting

Deliverability Consulting is an advisory-first service. We diagnose, review, analyze, and guide remediation of email deliverability issues – working within your existing systems, tools, and infrastructure.

This means we look at your authentication setup, your domain and IP reputation, your sending behavior and volume patterns, your tooling and workflows, and how all of those pieces interact with each other and with the inbox environments you’re targeting. From there, we provide clear, prioritized guidance on what to fix, what to leave alone, and how to reduce risk as your systems evolve.

What this is not: we don’t take over your sending infrastructure, manage your domains or IPs, or run your campaigns. You retain full ownership and operational control of your email systems. If you’re looking for someone to handle the infrastructure layer for you, that’s our Managed Email Infrastructure service. If you want end-to-end campaign execution, that’s Outbound Operations.

Deliverability Consulting is for teams that want to stay hands-on but need experienced judgment to understand what’s actually going on beneath the surface – and what to do about it.

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Every Deliverability Consulting engagement begins with a Diagnostic & Quick-Fix session. This is a $500 one-time fee that covers 1-2 working sessions focused on fast clarity: what’s actually wrong, what matters, and what doesn’t.

From there, the engagement takes one of three paths based on what the diagnostic uncovers. If the issue is straightforward and can be resolved within those initial sessions, we wrap up. Problem solved, no ongoing commitment needed.

If the diagnostic reveals systemic issues that require staged work – an ESP migration, a post-incident recovery, an infrastructure rebuild – we move into a Scoped Engagement: a clearly defined project with a 3-4 week timeline and a fixed scope.

If email is business-critical and you need ongoing expert oversight, we offer an Ongoing Advisory tier: quarterly or multi-month engagements that provide regular review, interpretation, and guidance as your systems evolve.

The $500 Diagnostic fee is fully credited to any subsequent engagement, so it’s effectively a no-risk starting point. You get actionable insight immediately, and you’re never committed to more than you need.

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The diagnostic is a working session, not a sales call. We get into your systems and evaluate what’s actually going on.

Typical focus areas include authentication and configuration review (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DNS alignment), domain and IP reputation checks, sending behavior analysis (volume patterns, cadence, complaint risk), tooling and workflow red flags, and inbox placement symptoms and their likely causes.

Where possible, we make immediate fixes during the session itself. Many deliverability issues – misconfigured authentication, DNS inconsistencies, obvious workflow problems – can be identified and corrected on the spot.

For issues that run deeper, the diagnostic establishes the context and priorities that guide any follow-on work. It answers the key question: “Is this a small fix that can be resolved now, or the tip of a bigger problem that requires a scoped engagement?”

You get clear prioritization of issues, actionable fixes you can implement immediately, guidance on what not to touch yet, and – if needed – a clear recommendation for next steps. Sessions can be recorded for your team’s internal reference.

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ESP support is platform-specific. Their view is limited to what’s happening inside their system, and their guidance is shaped by their platform’s capabilities and constraints. They don’t have visibility into your broader sending environment, and they’re not evaluating how different systems, streams, and behaviors interact with each other.

We look at the full picture. That includes your cold outbound, but also your transactional email, marketing email, lifecycle email, and any other sending streams that share domains, IPs, or sender identity. Deliverability problems are rarely isolated to one channel – they’re usually the result of interactions across the entire sending ecosystem that no single platform can see.

Beyond scope, there’s a depth difference. ESP support can tell you whether your SPF record passes. We can tell you why your SPF record passes but your email is still getting filtered – and what the actual cause is, which might have nothing to do with SPF at all.

Deliverability Consulting provides system-level judgment that spans tools, platforms, and email types. That wider context is what allows us to identify the real causes of deliverability issues, not just the symptoms that show up in one platform’s dashboard.

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Deliverability tools are useful – we use them ourselves. What they provide is data. What they don’t provide is judgment.

The challenge with deliverability is that most failures don’t come from a single misconfigured setting. They come from interactions between systems: a DNS change that was technically correct but created an alignment inconsistency, a volume increase that crossed an invisible threshold for a specific inbox provider, a complaint pattern that’s only visible when you look across sending streams rather than within one tool.

Tools will show you a green checkmark on your DMARC record while your email is quietly being routed to spam because of a completely different issue the tool doesn’t evaluate. They’ll report delivery rates without distinguishing between inbox and spam folder. They’ll flag “problems” that are actually normal behavior and miss the ones that are actually hurting you.

Experienced interpretation – the ability to read signals in context, distinguish noise from genuine issues, and know what to change versus what to leave alone – is what makes the difference between dashboard monitoring and actually solving deliverability problems. That’s what this service provides.

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Yes. Deliverability Consulting applies across all email contexts, not just cold outbound.

We work with cold email and sales teams, ecommerce and DTC brands sending fully opt-in marketing and lifecycle email, SaaS companies operating mixed environments (sales outreach plus opt-in product or marketing email), platforms and marketplaces where email is core to the product or business process, and teams navigating ESP or domain migrations regardless of email type.

This breadth matters because deliverability problems rarely stay contained within one sending stream. A reputation issue on your marketing email can affect your cold outbound. A misconfiguration in your transactional email can drag down your domain’s overall credibility. Understanding how all of your email streams interact is essential to diagnosing and fixing the real issues.

Whether you’re sending cold outbound into enterprise inboxes or running high-volume opt-in campaigns to consumer audiences, the underlying principles of sender credibility, infrastructure health, and behavioral consistency apply – and that’s where our expertise lives.

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The issues we find most commonly fall into a few categories:

Authentication misalignment – SPF, DKIM, or DMARC configurations that technically pass but don’t align correctly with actual sending behavior. These create friction with advanced filtering systems that look beyond simple pass-fail results.

DNS configuration gaps – subtle inconsistencies, missing records, or configurations that don’t match the profile of a durable, legitimate sender. These often go undetected because basic diagnostic tools report everything as “fine.”

Volume and cadence issues – sending patterns that cross invisible thresholds, inconsistent volume that triggers behavioral flags, or ramp-up approaches that are too aggressive for the target environment.

Complaint risk – conditions that generate complaints the team doesn’t know about, including suppression failures, list hygiene gaps, or messaging patterns that push engagement in the wrong direction.

Language and content patterns – wording that triggers advanced filtering in specific industries or enterprise environments. This has very little overlap with the “spam word” lists available online and is learned through direct exposure to real filtering behavior.

The common thread is that most of these issues are systemic, not surface-level. They’re the product of how multiple systems interact over time – not a single setting you can toggle and fix.

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Acute crisis support is a common entry point for Deliverability Consulting.

Whether it’s a sudden drop in inbox placement, a post-incident recovery after a blacklisting or spam complaint spike, an ESP transition that went wrong, or a domain reputation collapse, the diagnostic framework applies under pressure.

We work quickly to identify the actual cause – not just the symptoms – and provide a clear remediation path.

Crisis situations typically begin with a Diagnostic & Quick-Fix session focused on rapid triage: what happened, what’s still happening, what needs to stop immediately, and what can wait. From there, if the issue requires staged recovery work, we move into a Scoped Engagement with a defined timeline and clear milestones.

The advantage of working with us during a crisis is that we’ve seen these failure patterns before – across industries, ESPs, infrastructure setups, and sending environments. That pattern recognition means we can identify root causes faster and avoid the trial-and-error approach that often makes crises worse before they get better.

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All engagements start with a $500 Diagnostic & Quick-Fix session (1-2 sessions). This fee is fully credited to any subsequent engagement, so it’s effectively free if you continue working with us.

From there, pricing depends on the scope:

Scoped Engagements – for systemic issues, migrations, or post-incident recovery – typically run $2,500 to $5,000 as a one-time project fee, completed within 3-4 weeks.

Ongoing Advisory – for teams where email is business-critical and ongoing expert oversight is needed – typically runs $5,000 to $15,000 per 3-month term.

Pricing is determined by the number of systems, domains, IPs, brands, and internal stakeholders involved. We’re transparent about what drives the cost, and the Diagnostic session gives both of us a clear picture of what’s actually needed before any further commitment.

Many issues are fully resolved within the Diagnostic & Quick-Fix session itself. You’re never committed to more than the initial $500 to find out.

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No. Deliverability Consulting is advisory and client-operated. You retain full ownership and control of your domains, IPs, ESPs, tools, and workflows throughout the engagement.

We diagnose, advise, and guide remediation. Your team implements the changes. We provide oversight during implementation to reduce risk, but we don’t take custody of any part of your sending environment.

This is an intentional design choice. Many teams need expert deliverability guidance but want to – or need to – maintain internal ownership of their systems. Deliverability Consulting is built for that model.

If you decide at any point that you’d rather hand off infrastructure management entirely, our Managed Email Infrastructure service is designed for that. The two services are cleanly separated, and moving between them is straightforward. But Deliverability Consulting never assumes or requires that transition.

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If you’re on a Managed Email Infrastructure plan, our highest level of Deliverability Consulting is already included at no additional cost. That covers all email types, systems, and use cases within your engagement – not just the cold outbound running on our infrastructure.

So if you’re experiencing deliverability issues with your marketing email, transactional email, or any other sending stream, that’s already within scope. You don’t need a separate consulting engagement.

Standalone Deliverability Consulting is designed for teams that are operating their own infrastructure and need advisory support without managed rails. If you’re already on Managed Email Infrastructure, you’re covered.

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It depends entirely on what the Diagnostic uncovers. There’s no default timeline or open-ended retainer.

Some issues are fully resolved in 1–2 sessions – a misconfigured authentication record, a DNS inconsistency, a workflow adjustment. In those cases, the $500 Diagnostic & Quick-Fix is the entire engagement.

Systemic problems – an ESP migration, a post-incident recovery, an infrastructure rebuild – typically require a Scoped Engagement of 3–4 weeks with defined milestones and clear deliverables.

Teams that need ongoing oversight – because email is business-critical and the sending environment is complex or evolving – move into Ongoing Advisory on quarterly terms.

The diagnostic determines what’s needed. Nothing is open-ended by default, and you’re never locked into a scope that exceeds the problem. If a 2-session diagnostic solves the issue, that’s the engagement. If it reveals something deeper, we define the next step clearly before proceeding.

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