The Inbox Placement Test is a tool that helps you determine where your emails are landing - in the primary, spam folder, or missing entirely. Unlike basic email delivery tracking, which only confirms whether an email was sent, this test provides a detailed breakdown of your inbox placement across different email service providers (ESPs) like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. To perform the test, you send a test email from your email account to the provided addresses, allowing you to monitor how your email is treated by various providers.

By running an Inbox Placement Test, you gain real-time insights into your email deliverability, helping you detect issues before they affect your campaigns. These insights help you understand how inbox placement tools can improve your results by providing actionable analysis on where your emails land and what factors influence inbox placement. Whether you’re sending cold emails, newsletters, or transactional emails, knowing where your messages land is essential for maximizing engagement and response rates.

The tool works by simulating a real-world email sending scenario. Here’s how it works:

1. Receive Your Unique Test Code - The tool generates a unique code that you need to paste into a test email.
2. Send to the Provided Email Addresses - You receive a list of test email addresses that belong to different email service providers (ESPs). You must send your test email from the mailbox you want to analyze to these addresses.
3. Analyze the Results - Once the test emails are sent, the tool tracks where each email lands—Inbox, Spam, or Missing—and generates a detailed Inbox Placement Report. The tool also checks how different spam engines evaluate your emails, providing insights into how various filters like SpamAssassin or Barracuda might classify your message.
4. View Your Placement Results Score - The tool calculates an overall Placement Results Score (0-100%), which represents the percentage of emails that successfully made it to the primary. Additionally, it provides an email spam score to help you understand the likelihood of your email being flagged as spam.

This process helps you understand your email's placement in the inbox, spam, or other folders, and how different email providers and spam engines are handling your messages, allowing you to make informed adjustments to improve deliverability and domain reputation.

Yes, the Inbox Placement Test is free to use, but with limitations. The free version allows up to 10 tests per month, which is ideal for occasional checks on your email deliverability.

For unlimited testing, you can access the tool inside Warmforge, where you can run as many tests as needed. The Warmforge version is designed for serious email senders who want to consistently monitor their inbox placement and optimize their email campaigns at scale.

Even if your emails are technically delivered, that doesn’t mean they are seen. If an email lands in the spam folder instead of the primary inbox, it is unlikely to be opened or read - significantly reducing your engagement rates and ROI. Reaching recipients' inboxes is critical for maximizing engagement and ensuring your message is actually received.

Inbox placement is influenced by several factors, including domain & mailbox reputation, authentication settings (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), email content, and sending behavior. Poor inbox placement can damage your domain reputation, lead to higher spam complaints, and ultimately hurt future deliverability.

By regularly testing your inbox placement, you can detect deliverability issues early, adjust your email strategy, and ensure that more of your emails reach the intended recipient’s inbox. Regular inbox placement testing is a key part of email campaign optimization, helping you fine-tune your approach for better performance and results.

• Inbox Delivery Rate simply measures that an email was successfully sent from your server and received by the recipient’s email service provider (ESP). However, delivery tracking does not tell you where the email actually landed - it could be in the inbox, spam folder, or even blocked without notification.
• Inbox Placement refers to where the email lands after delivery - primary inbox, spam folder, or missing entirely.

For example, an email marked as delivered could still land in spam, meaning your audience never actually sees it. That’s why inbox placement testing is crucial - it helps you understand and optimize where your emails land with actionable insights, ensuring higher engagement and conversion rates.

The Placement Results Score (0-100%) is a performance metric that measures how effectively your emails are reaching the primary inbox. It is calculated based on the total number of test emails sent vs. how many successfully landed in the inbox.

• A High Score (81-100%) - Indicates strong inbox placement, meaning most of your emails are avoiding spam filters and reaching recipients.
• A Moderate Score (50-80%) - Suggests some emails are landing in spam, which could indicate issues with your content, authentication settings, or domain reputation.
• A Low Score (0-49%) - Indicates major deliverability problems, meaning a significant percentage of your emails are being marked as spam or not delivered at all.

Monitoring your Placement Results Score helps you track improvements over time and make necessary adjustments to improve your email deliverability with actionable insights.

The Inbox Placement Test Report categorizes your test emails into three possible inbox placement results:

• Inbox - The email was successfully delivered into the recipient’s primary inbox, meaning it has a high chance of being opened and read.
• Spam - That same email was delivered but flagged as spam, meaning it was sent to spam folders where the recipient will likely never see it. Emails in spam folders are often ignored or deleted, which negatively impacts your email performance.
• Missing - The email was not delivered, meaning it may have been blocked by the ESP due to blacklisting, authentication issues, or poor domain reputation.

By analyzing these insights provided in the test, you can take corrective actions for better inbox placement and increase deliverability. Preventing emails from being sent to spam folders helps avoid having your messages deleted before being read.

The Inbox Placement Test is available both as a standalone free tool and as an unlimited feature inside Warmforge. Here’s how they compare:

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With Warmforge, you get unlimited inbox placement testing, continuous deliverability tracking, and advanced insights into your email reputation, blacklist status, and authentication setup (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). Using an integrated email program like Warmforge streamlines deliverability monitoring and optimization by providing all these features in one platform.

If you’re running high-volume email campaigns, upgrading to Warmforge ensures that you never hit a test limit and can continuously monitor and optimize for better inbox placement.

Improving your inbox placement rate requires optimizing multiple factors that affect how mailbox providers filter and classify your emails. Before you hit send, always review and test your emails to ensure they are optimized for inbox placement and not likely to end up in spam or promotions folders. Here are key steps to help ensure your emails reach the primary inbox instead of the junk folder or getting lost:

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1. Configure Email Authentication Protocols: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
   Email providers check email authentication records to verify the legitimacy of your emails. Proper authentication with SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) helps establish trust with email service providers (ESPs) and global mailbox providers and reduces the risk of being flagged by spam filters.
2. Warm Up Your Mailbox and Domain
   If you’re using a new domain or haven’t been sending emails consistently, warming up your mailbox helps establish a positive domain & mailbox reputation. Gradually increasing your sending volume over time signals to internet service providers (ISPs) and major mailbox providers that your emails are legitimate.
3. Maintain a Healthy Email List
   Sending emails to invalid addresses, spam traps, or inactive recipients can harm your reputation. Use an email verification tool to clean your list and remove bounced, invalid, low quality or disposable emails before sending and make sure to carefully select your target audience and send to only real email addresses for each email campaign.
4. Avoid Spam Triggers in Email Copy
   Certain words, phrases, and formatting choices can trigger spam filters. Avoid excessive use of capital letters, exclamation marks, promotional language, and multiple links. Also, ensure that your email is properly formatted with a good balance of engaging content and spintax.
5. Monitor Your Sender Reputation and Blacklist Status
   ISPs track your sender reputation based on factors like bounce rates, spam complaints, and engagement levels. Regularly monitor your domain and IP to ensure they are not blacklisted. If you find yourself on a blocklist, take action to resolve the issue immediately.
6. Engage With Recipients and Encourage Responses
   ISPs consider engagement metrics, such as click-through rates, and replies, to determine email’s placement. Encourage recipients to reply, whitelist your email, or move emails to their main inbox folder to improve deliverability signals.
7. Test Your Inbox Placement Regularly
   Use an Inbox Placement Test or other email deliverability tools to check how your emails perform across different ESPs. Inbox placement testing helps you can make data-driven adjustments to improve future deliverability.

By following these best practices, you can increase your inbox placement rate, improve engagement, and maximize the success of your email campaigns.