Email deliverability consulting
Hire an email deliverability consultant who has shipped billions of emails
Whether your sender reputation is tanking, your DMARC reports are unreadable, or your domain is being spoofed, you need an email deliverability consultant who has already seen it. I have spent 15 years on both sides of the wire — co-founding Mailjet and growing it to billions of emails per month, and now helping organizations reach DMARC enforcement without breaking legitimate mail.
What an email deliverability consultant does
Email deliverability is the chain of technical systems that decides whether your messages reach the inbox or land in spam, get rejected, or quietly disappear. An email deliverability consultant audits that chain end-to-end, fixes what is broken, and gets you to a state where legitimate mail is authenticated and unauthenticated mail is rejected.
A typical engagement covers:
- Authentication deployment — DMARC, SPF, DKIM, BIMI, and MTA-STS, configured and tested across every sending source.
- Sender reputation — diagnosing why ISPs are throttling or junking you, fixing the underlying causes, and rebuilding trust with major mailbox providers.
- Blacklist remediation — getting your IPs and domains delisted from Spamhaus, SORBS, Barracuda, and other reputation services, then keeping them off.
- IP warmup planning — staged volume ramps for new sending IPs so you build reputation instead of triggering rate limits and bulk-folder routing.
- DMARC report analysis — turning the unreadable XML stream into a clear list of who is sending on your behalf and what to do about each one.
- Deliverability audits — a written read of your full email authentication and reputation posture, with prioritized recommendations.
- Compliance readiness — Google and Yahoo bulk sender requirements, PCI DSS v4.0 DMARC mandates, and security audits.
A good deliverability consultant works alongside your IT or security team — giving clear DNS instructions, walking through vendor configurations, and leaving you with internal expertise rather than long-term dependency.
Why organizations get stuck
DMARC tools show you data. But data alone does not get you to enforcement.
The monitoring trap
Most organizations publish a DMARC record with p=none and start collecting reports. Months later, they are still at p=none. The reports are hard to read, the sending sources are hard to identify, and nobody wants to be the person who blocked a legitimate email by moving too fast.
The vendor puzzle
A typical organization sends email from 5 to 20 different platforms: marketing automation, CRM, support tickets, billing, HR tools, signature services. Each one needs to be identified, authenticated with SPF or DKIM, and tested before you can enforce your DMARC policy. Miss one, and legitimate email gets rejected.
Compliance deadlines are here
Google and Yahoo now require DMARC for bulk senders. PCI DSS v4.0 mandates DMARC enforcement since March 2025. These are not future requirements. They are active today, and non-compliance means deliverability problems or failed audits.
The cost of getting it wrong
A misconfigured DMARC policy can block customer invoices, password reset emails, or order confirmations. Users notice within hours. Getting the enforcement step right the first time is much cheaper than cleaning up after it goes wrong.
Marc Lelu
Email deliverability consultant
I have been building and operating email infrastructure for over 15 years. I graduated from Telecom Paris in 2008, joined Orange, then co-founded Mailjet, where we grew from zero to processing billions of emails a month.
I know what happens on both sides of the wire: the sending infrastructure and the receiving policies that decide what reaches the inbox. As a deliverability consultant I have guided organizations from p=none to full DMARC enforcement across dozens of domains and hundreds of sending sources.
My clients come from the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, and across Europe. Email deliverability problems look the same regardless of timezone, and so does the work to fix them.
What I help with
DMARC deployment
From p=none to p=reject. Every sending source mapped. Every vendor worked through. Enforcement only when nothing legitimate will bounce.
Email deliverability audit
A full read of your SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, and BIMI records. Written findings with clear recommendations — before something breaks, not after.
Multi-domain strategy
For organizations with dozens or hundreds of domains. Which ones to tackle first, how to handle subdomains, and a rollout sequence that doesn't create more problems than it solves.
Incident response
Your domain is being spoofed or your emails are landing in spam. Fast diagnosis of what broke, and a fix that doesn't create new problems in the process.
Team training
Hands-on workshops for your IT team on email authentication fundamentals. Build internal expertise so you can maintain your setup independently.
Compliance readiness
Google and Yahoo bulk sender rules, PCI DSS v4.0 DMARC mandates, security audits. A concrete plan that gets you compliant on time, not just theoretically on track.
Sender reputation recovery
Your IPs and domains are being throttled, junked, or rejected by major mailbox providers. I diagnose what triggered the drop, fix the underlying causes, and rebuild trust with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and the rest.
Blacklist remediation
Spamhaus, SORBS, Barracuda, UCEPROTECT. Getting your IPs and domains delisted is one part; the bigger work is identifying what put you on the list and making sure it does not happen again.
IP warmup planning
Moving to a new sending IP, ESP, or dedicated infrastructure. A staged volume ramp tuned to your audience and ISPs, so you build reputation instead of triggering rate limits and bulk-folder routing.
When should you hire an email deliverability consultant?
If any of these sound familiar, an email deliverability consultant will pay for themselves quickly.
You have been stuck at p=none for months
You started DMARC monitoring but the reports are overwhelming. A deliverability consultant interprets the data, identifies every legitimate sender, and builds a clear path to enforcement.
You manage one or several critical domains and need a deliverability strategy
Parent companies, subsidiaries, product brands. You need a prioritized rollout plan covering authentication, sender reputation, and BIMI — not domain-by-domain firefighting.
You face a compliance deadline
PCI DSS v4.0, Google and Yahoo bulk sender requirements, or a security audit requires DMARC enforcement on a fixed timeline. A deliverability consultant turns the deadline into a concrete plan.
Your emails are landing in spam or your domain is being spoofed
Sender reputation cratered, a blacklisting hit, or a phishing campaign is impersonating you. You need fast, expert help before it affects revenue or customer trust.
How it works
Free pre-qualification
Describe your situation by email. I'll review your records, figure out the scope, and send back a written quote. No call required, no commitment.
Hands-on engagement
Scope agreed, I work directly with your team. Regular calls, shared docs, DNS change instructions your IT team can act on. You see everything, there's no black box.
Enforcement achieved
Your domains reach p=reject with all legitimate sources properly authenticated. Your team has the knowledge to maintain it.
Transparent pricing
One rate, no surprises. Pre-qualification and initial assessment are always free.
Consulting rate
Common questions
What does an email deliverability consultant do?
An email deliverability consultant audits and fixes the chain of systems that decides whether your emails reach the inbox: DMARC, SPF, DKIM, BIMI, MTA-STS, sending IP reputation, list hygiene, and ISP relations. The work involves mapping every service that sends on your behalf, authenticating each one, and moving to DMARC enforcement only once nothing legitimate will bounce.
How much does an email deliverability consultant cost?
I bill at $500 per hour. Pre-qualification and the initial assessment are always free. After scope is agreed you receive a written quote before any work starts, and you are invoiced monthly for the hours actually used. A single-domain DMARC enforcement project typically runs 8 to 20 hours; complex multi-domain rollouts run 40 to 120 hours.
Email deliverability consultant vs. agency: which should I choose?
An agency makes sense when you need ongoing campaign management, creative production, or large-scale list cleaning. An independent email deliverability consultant is faster and cheaper when the problem is technical: authentication, sender reputation, blacklist remediation, deliverability audits, or compliance deadlines. With me you work directly with the engineer doing the work, not a junior analyst, and you keep the knowledge in-house at the end of the engagement.
How long does it take to fix email deliverability issues?
Sender reputation issues and broken authentication can usually be diagnosed within a few hours and fixed within a week. Reaching DMARC p=reject typically takes 4 to 6 weeks for a single domain with a few sending vendors, and 3 to 6 months for organizations with dozens of domains and many third-party senders. The free assessment gives you a realistic timeline before any commitment.
Do you offer one-time email deliverability audits?
Yes. A standalone email deliverability audit covers your SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, BIMI, and TLS-RPT records, sender reputation across major IP and domain blacklists, and your DMARC report data. You receive a written report with prioritized findings and remediation steps. A single-domain audit takes 2 to 4 hours; multi-domain audits scale from there. No DMARCTrust subscription required — consulting is tool-agnostic.
Tell me about your situation
Describe your email setup and what you are trying to achieve. I will review it and get back to you with an honest assessment, free of charge.