2026-11-04 –, Room 2
A good campaign can still fail before anyone reads it.
Mailbox providers evaluate sender identity, authentication, alignment, reputation, sending patterns, links and audience behaviour long before a person sees the subject line. For Mautic users, that means deliverability is not just an email setting. It is operational infrastructure.
This practical talk explains what marketers, implementers and admins need to understand about SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DMARCbis, domain alignment and the wider trust layer around the inbox. The goal is not to turn marketers into DNS specialists. The goal is to show why Mautic campaigns need sender trust before campaign quality has a chance to matter.
Marketing automation often treats sending as the final step: the segment is selected, the campaign is built, the email is approved, and Mautic sends.
But the inbox has already made several decisions before the reader sees anything. Mailbox providers ask two basic questions before delivery: is this message safe, and is it wanted? Authentication, reputation, links, list quality, sending behaviour and audience response all feed into those questions.
That changes how Mautic teams should think about email. SPF, DKIM and DMARC are not technical housekeeping. Domain alignment is not a detail. Reputation is not a single dashboard score. Open rate can be a deliverability signal before it is an engagement signal. A hacked website, poor list acquisition or a sudden sending spike can damage inbox placement even when the email content itself is fine.
This talk translates modern inbox trust into practical Mautic work.
It will cover:
- why “the email was sent” does not mean “the email had a fair chance”
- how SPF, DKIM and DMARC work together, and where teams commonly misunderstand them
- what DMARCbis is trying to improve and why it matters for senders
- why authentication, alignment and reputation are related but not the same thing
- why open rates should be read carefully as deliverability signals
- what Mautic admins should check before launching important campaigns
- what agencies should standardize across client setups
- where Mautic could make sender readiness more visible in the product and documentation
This is not a deep DNS workshop and not a generic deliverability checklist. It is a translation layer between marketing, infrastructure and Mautic implementation work.
Sven Döring is Head of Data at VML Germany and an active contributor to the Mautic community. He works at the intersection of marketing technology, data strategy and digital sovereignty, helping organizations build more accountable customer infrastructure. In Mautic, he contributes to community strategy, marketing and Mautic World Conference. He is a member of the Mautic Council and leads the Mautic Marketing Team. .