Reach the Inbox
How email delivery works, for the person who has to decide — and what to do when it stops working.
The book is free to download, in EPUB. It was written by François Lane.
Download the EPUB
What is in it
Email goes to spam, and nobody will tell you why.
Mailbox providers do not publish their rules, open rates stopped meaning much once Apple began opening mail on recipients' behalf, and most advice online contradicts itself from one article to the next.
Introduction: The Inbox Is Earned
Why a delivery rate just under 100% can hide the only number that matters: how many people saw the message.
Why Good Email Lands in Spam
A newsletter works for three years, then stops. The cause isn't the template; it's what thousands of readers did with the last hundred emails.
Proving Who You Are
SPF, DKIM and DMARC as one job: telling providers which mail is really yours, and stopping the mail that isn't.
The Big-Provider Rules
What Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft actually require, each rule dated and sourced — and why the rulebook changes when your volume does.
A List People Want
How one rented or badge-scanned list damages a list that took years to earn, and what consent has to look like.
Sending Like a Trusted Sender
Volume, cadence and dedicated IPs: why doing something unfamiliar too fast looks identical to doing something dishonest.
Content That Doesn't Hurt You
The few design and content choices that genuinely cost you delivery, and the many that don't.
Measuring What's Real
Why an open rate can nearly double without anything improving, and which numbers still mean something.
Keeping the List Healthy
Removing addresses feels like losing sales. Keeping them raises your complaint and bounce rates.
When Things Go Wrong
Symptom to cause to fix, for the sender whose mail is in spam today. If that's you, start here.
Staying Legal
CASL, CAN-SPAM and GDPR side by side, for anyone whose list crosses a border.
Where to Go from Here
What to do first, depending on where you stand today.
François Lane
A book by François Lane about how email actually reaches people, and what to do when it stops. It is written for the person who has to decide — not for a specialist, and not for someone who wants to become one.
This book assumes you know what a campaign is. It does not assume you know what DKIM is.
You will learn
- Why reputation is built from how recipients react, not from the words in a subject line
- How to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, in that order, and what each one actually proves
- What Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft require from bulk senders, and what happens when a sender misses it
- How to build a list that does not generate complaints, and how to retire one that does
- Which metrics survived Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, and which ones to stop reporting
- How to read a bounce, a block, and a blocklisting, and what to do about each
- What to check first when delivery drops off
It does not promise inbox placement; nobody honestly can.
Every rule and every number carries a date and a source, so a reader can check it and see when it has gone stale.