Inbox placement testing
An inbox placement test sends a real campaign email to a set of mailboxes you control across Gmail, Outlook and other providers, then records where it landed: primary inbox, promotions, spam, or no…
Draft — written from product facts + domain knowledge; UI labels to be verified before publishing.
An inbox placement test sends a real campaign email to a set of mailboxes you control across Gmail, Outlook and other providers, then records where it landed: primary inbox, promotions, spam, or not delivered. Warm-up analytics tell you how the mailbox performs with warm-up content; a placement test tells you how your actual campaign copy performs from that mailbox. Run one before every launch and after any change to copy or infrastructure.
Prerequisites
- The campaign sequence written and saved.
- Sender mailboxes warmed (health 85+).
- Seed addresses: at least one personal Gmail, one Google Workspace, one Outlook.com, one Microsoft 365, and if possible Yahoo and iCloud. Create them or use a paid seed-list service.
Steps: manual seed test
- Create a list called "Seed – placement" under Contacts and upload your seed addresses with a real first name and company so variables render.
- Duplicate the campaign or create a test campaign with the same sequence, and select every sender mailbox under Sender Accounts.
- Under Contacts, add the seed list. Set Daily new contacts limit high enough to send all seeds today.
- Click Launch Campaign.
- Wait 10–15 minutes, then log in to each seed mailbox and note where the email landed: Inbox, Promotions/Other, Spam, or missing.
- For at least one Gmail seed, open the message → Show original and confirm SPF: PASS, DKIM: PASS, DMARC: PASS.
- Record the results per sender mailbox and per provider in a simple table.
- Pause or delete the test campaign.
Steps: using OutreachFox warm-up data as a proxy
- Go to Mailbox → mailbox → Warm up.
- Read inbox placement, spam placement and the ESP breakdown.
- Treat this as the mailbox baseline. If the seed test result is much worse than the warm-up placement, the copy is the cause; if both are bad, the mailbox or domain is.
How to read results
| **Result** | **Meaning** | **Action** |
| Inbox at all providers | Ready | Launch |
| Inbox at Google, spam at Microsoft | Provider-specific reputation | Slow ramp, route Microsoft leads to Microsoft mailboxes (Auto match leads), retest in 5 days |
| Promotions tab | Content looks like marketing | Cut links, images, formatting; enable plain text |
| Spam everywhere | Authentication or domain reputation | Check SPF/DKIM/DMARC, blacklists, warm-up health |
| Missing (never arrived) | Hard block or MX issue on seed | Check bounce in campaign; check seed mailbox filters |
Tips
- Test each sending domain separately. One domain's problem should not hide behind another's success.
- Test each variant (A/B/C) — a single extra link in variant B can move it to Promotions.
- Retest weekly during a campaign's first month; reputation moves.
- Seed mailboxes must be used normally (receive other mail, log in regularly) or providers treat them as dormant and filter oddly.
- Marking your own test emails as "not spam" in seed inboxes helps a little, but do not rely on it; that is what warm-up is for.
Troubleshooting
- Seeds show inbox but real prospects do not reply. Placement is fine; targeting or copy is not. Check reply categorisation for negative replies.
- Placement varies day to day. Normal within 10%. Larger swings point at volume spikes; check the send/reply history for the mailbox.
- Test campaign keeps sending follow-ups to seeds. Pause the test campaign after step 1 arrives, or delete it.
Related articles
- Read the warmup health dashboard
- Review warmup send/reply history and ESP breakdown
- Spam-trigger words and copy checks
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC: what they are and how to check yours
- Enable Auto match ESP
- Landing in spam? The recovery playbook
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