Placement Tests Overview

Purpose

A placement test tells you where your emails actually land — inbox, spam, or promotions tab — broken down by email provider (Google, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.) before you send to your real audience. This article explains how placement tests work, what you can learn from them, and how to run one.

Why Run a Placement Test

Your warming dashboard shows an average inbox rate across your warming network, but that's an aggregate. A placement test lets you:

• Test a specific email (subject, body, links) with a specific sender against seed addresses at each major provider.
• See provider-by-provider placement — e.g., 99% inbox on Google but 60% inbox on Outlook.
• Identify whether a content issue (spam-triggering words, certain links) or a sender reputation issue is causing problems.
• Do this before a large send, not after.

Run a placement test any time you want to:

• Launch a new campaign with a new email template
• Test a new mailbox you haven't used for campaigns yet
• Diagnose a drop in open rates on an existing campaign

Navigate to Placement Tests

Go to Placement Tests from the team sidebar. If you don't see it, check your role permissions.

How a Placement Test Works

1. You create a test using one of your connected sender mailboxes and an email template.
2. SuperSend sends your test email to a network of "seed" addresses — real inboxes at Google, Outlook, Yahoo, Zoho, and other providers.
3. The seed addresses report back: did the email land in inbox, spam, or promotions?
4. Results appear in the placement test dashboard within a few minutes.

Placement tests cost global credits (typically a small number per test depending on the number of seed addresses tested). Check Admin → Global Credits before running large tests.

Automated placement testing

SuperSend can run placement tests on a schedule for monitored senders so you don't have to start every test manually. Automated placement uses the same global credits as manual tests; the settings panel shows credits per seed and your available balance so you can estimate usage before turning it on.

Configure team auto testing

1. Go to Placement Tests in the team sidebar.
2. Open Auto Placement Testing using the settings (gear) icon on the page header. The side panel subtitle is Configure automated placement tests.
3. Turn on Enable Auto Testing for the team. When it's on, the panel shows Automated Testing with an Active badge and how many senders are monitored.
4. Set Test Frequency: Weekly (7 days), Bi-weekly (14 days), or Monthly (30 days).
5. How it works (shown in the panel): tests run automatically on that cadence, SuperSend selects representative senders (including by domain), and results show up in your placement test history.

Monitored senders

Expand Monitored Senders to see each scheduled mailbox, Last / Next run times, and pause or resume that sender's schedule with the play/pause control. Pausing one sender does not turn off auto testing for the whole team.

Sender Placement view

When team auto testing is enabled and this sender is on a schedule, open the sender and go to Placement & Deliverability. You'll see Automated Testing Active or Paused, the next run (or last run if paused), and a button to pause or resume that sender's automated schedule.

Permissions

If you don't see Placement Tests in the sidebar, your role may not include placement test access — same as for manual tests.

Create a Placement Test

1. On the Placement Tests page, click New Test (or Create Test).
2. Configure the test:

• Sender — choose the mailbox to send from. This is the sender whose reputation is being tested.
• Subject — the subject line you plan to use. Subject lines can influence spam filtering.
• Email Body — paste or write the email content. The actual content matters — links, certain phrases, image ratios, and HTML structure all affect placement.

3. Run the test.

SuperSend sends the email and waits for placement data to come back from the seed network.

Reading the Results

Results show placement by provider:

Green (≥95% inbox): This sender/content combination is landing well at this provider.

Yellow (90–94%): Borderline — some emails are being filtered. Worth monitoring.

Red (<90%): Active spam filtering happening. Investigate before sending a campaign.

Diagnosing Problems from Placement Results

If you're getting spam on one provider but not others:

The problem is likely provider-specific reputation. Check if the sending domain has good SPF/DKIM/DMARC alignment (some providers enforce this more strictly). Check if the sending domain has a history with that provider.

If you're getting spam across all providers:

The problem is likely content. Common culprits:

• Spam-triggering phrases in subject or body ("free," "guaranteed," "limited time," etc.)
• Link shorteners (bit.ly, etc.) — use real domain URLs
• HTML with too many images and not enough text
• Excessive link count
• Missing opt-out language

Try a plain-text version of the same email and run another test. If plain-text performs better, the HTML formatting is the issue.

If results are inconsistent (good one day, bad the next):

Sender reputation fluctuates. Run multiple tests over a few days to get a reliable average. If reputation is inconsistent, it usually means warm-up isn't stable yet — let warming run longer before scaling.

Expected Result

You know exactly which email providers your placement test sender/content combination lands in inbox vs. spam, giving you data to act on before a live campaign send.

Troubleshooting

• Issue: Test results don't show up.

Fix: Wait a few minutes — seed inboxes need time to report back. If results still don't appear after 10 minutes, check that the sender used is actively connected and able to send.

• Issue: You don't have enough credits to run a test.

Fix: Check your credit balance in Admin → Global Credits. Purchase additional credits from Billing if needed.

Related Articles

• Run and Interpret Placement Tests
• Warming Overview
• Understand Sender Health

Updated on: 03/04/2026