If you’ve worked in email long enough, you’ve had this conversation or something very close to it with your boss. It’s the moment every sender dreads. And it usually comes with a mix of confusion, frustration, and a strong sense that something has been done to you. But it raises a bigger question.
Are we looking at this from the right perspective?
Note: This is something I spoke about at Deliverability Summit 2026 in Barcelona… where we explored whether we might be thinking about email filters the wrong way.
Filters are the problem... right?
There’s a common narrative in email.
Filters are:
overly aggressive
anti-business
out to get legitimate senders.
And when something gets blocked, that narrative gets reinforced pretty quickly. You’ve done nothing differently. Your metrics look fine. Your campaign is business-critical.
So the conclusion is obvious: the filter is wrong.
I get it. I’ve been on that side of the conversation. But it’s only one side.
What we don't see
If you’ve ever looked at your spam folder and thought, that’s a mess, you’re not wrong.
But it’s also only a tiny fraction of what’s actually being handled. The reality is that, however bad your spam folder looks, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Most of what filters deal with never gets anywhere near the inbox. Somewhere in the region of 40–50% of all email is spam. In many environments, it’s higher. And that’s just the baseline.
It's not just spam
When people talk about spam, it’s easy to picture the usual suspects.
Viagra. Questionable offers. Cold outreach.
But email isn’t just an annoyance channel. It’s one of the primary vectors for much more serious problems.
Financial fraud.
Account takeover.
Spear phishing.
Malware distribution.
There are entire operations built around manipulating people through email, and some of them are incredibly sophisticated. If you’ve followed things like “pig butchering” scams or large-scale phishing campaigns, you’ll know how real the impact can be. And then there are areas that go far beyond commercial spam, things that are actively harmful, illegal, and deeply disturbing. This is what filters are dealing with, every day, at scale.
Why people fight spam
It’s easy to forget this when you’re in the middle of a deliverability issue. But the people building and operating filters aren’t trying to block your business. They’re trying to protect users.
And, more broadly, they’re trying to protect the channel itself. Because if they don’t, we’ve already seen what happens.
Here’s a simple comparison. How many times do you answer calls from numbers you don’t recognize? Or respond to unsolicited snail mail? Both of those channels got overwhelmed with abuse. Scams, spam, fraud. And over time, people just stopped trusting them.
Now imagine email in that world.
Without effective filtering, it becomes unusable. Not “just less effective,” literally unusable. Everything gets drowned out. And at that point, it doesn’t matter how good your campaign is. Nobody’s listening.
So, whose side are you on?
If you’re not aligned with the people trying to keep the channel clean, then you’re, at best, working against them. And at worst, helping create the same conditions that bad actors rely on.
That doesn’t mean agreeing with every filtering decision. Or never questioning a block. But it does mean changing how we think about the relationship.
Spamhaus, mailbox providers, and anti-abuse teams aren’t the enemy - far from it. They’re all part of the same ecosystem and we need to step back and acknowledge that they’re on our side too.
What this means in practice
For most people reading this, none of this is new. You already care about deliverability. You already run good programs. But it’s still worth stepping back occasionally and asking:
Are we making decisions that support the long-term health of the channel? Or are we pushing the limits because we can?
That might show up as:
mailing slightly older data than you should
being a bit too aggressive with frequency
Individually, those decisions can feel small. Collectively, they shape how filters, and users, experience your mail.
Even good senders need a reminder
This isn’t about bad actors. They’re not reading blog posts like this.
This is about everyone else. The teams that care, that try to do things properly, but still operate under pressure.
Deadlines. Targets. Growth expectations.
It’s easy, over time, to slip into a mindset where filters are something to work around, rather than something to work with.
The future is in our hands
Email still works remarkably well as a channel. But it works because there’s a system in place that keeps it usable. Filters are a big part of that system.
So the question isn’t just:
How do we get past the filters?
It’s:
How do we work with them to keep this channel effective for everyone?
Because ultimately, the long-term health of email depends on the choices we make as senders.
Final thought
The next time something gets blocked, it’s worth pausing before assuming it’s just “them.” Sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s a signal.
And if we take the time to understand it and align with the people trying to solve the bigger problem, we end up with something better than just a fixed campaign. We end up helping keep the entire channel working.
If you’re thinking about how your sending practices, email infrastructure, and policies align with modern filtering and anti-abuse systems, it may be worth taking a closer look at how your setup supports that goal.