Private email infrastructure & deliverability engineering
northboundmail.net
NorthboundMail Systems
Est. 2011 — SMTP infrastructure & deliverability
Deliverability

Inbox Placement

Measurement, analysis and improvement of the rate at which your messages reach the inbox rather than the spam folder or the void. Placement is what senders actually care about — delivery is what most reports actually measure.

Overview

Delivered is not the same as inbox. A message accepted by a receiving MTA can be delivered to spam, promotions, focused, other, or filed silently. Real inbox placement is measured by seeded panels across major providers, sampled continuously.

Northbound operates seed panels across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Apple, and major corporate providers, samples on every significant send, and reports placement by provider, campaign and IP.

Benefits

  • Placement measured, not inferred
  • Provider-level breakdown, not just an aggregate
  • Correlation to content, list segment and sending IP

Technical specifications

Seed providersGmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Apple iCloud, corporate O365
Sample cadencePer major campaign, or scheduled hourly for transactional flows

Use cases

  • — Every sender should measure placement. Otherwise the number is a guess.

Questions

Are seed lists accurate?
As a directional indicator, yes. As an absolute measurement of every recipient, no. Combined with Postmaster and SNDS data, seed panels are the best available proxy for real inbox rate.

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