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Engineering
Deliverability in the age of AI-sent email
AI doesn't change SPF, DKIM, or DMARC. It does change volume patterns — and that's where most teams quietly land in spam.
Sam Whitfield
Solo founder, Clipdeck
· 5 min read
Engineering5 min read
#deliverability#email#dmarc
The boring layer is still the most important
Founders love to talk about content. Postmasters care about patterns.
When you start sending AI-personalised follow-ups, your sending shape changes — and most teams don't notice until reply rate falls off a cliff three weeks later.
The three patterns that get teams in trouble
- Spiky volume. AI surfaces opportunities in bursts. A 3× volume spike on Tuesday looks like a compromised mailbox to Gmail.
- One-domain risk. Sending all AI-driven mail through your primary marketing domain ties your transactional reputation to growth experiments.
- Unsubscribe friction. AI emails feel personal, so people don't unsubscribe — they mark as spam. That hurts you more than it helps them.
The fix
- 1Warm up a separate subdomain (e.g.
go.yourdomain.com) for AI-driven mail - 2Cap per-day volume per sender until you've earned the reputation
- 3One-click unsubscribe everywhere, including replies that say "stop"
- 4DMARC at `p=quarantine` with reporting on, so you actually see what's happening
VibeFollow handles all of the above by default, but the principles apply to any stack.
Deliverability isn't a setting. It's a habit.
Tagged#deliverability#email#dmarc
Sam Whitfield
Solo founder, Clipdeck
Writes about lifecycle, intent, and what changes when AI gets the keys to the funnel.