The Role of Location-Based Infrastructure in Email and SMS Deliverability
My friend Rachel runs marketing for an e-commerce company selling across North America. She noticed something off last quarter – email performance fell in the US but held up in other markets. Open rates dropped from 22% to 8% overnight. After two weeks of troubleshooting, she discovered the problem: their email infrastructure routed through European servers, and major US providers had started flagging those messages as suspicious simply because of where they originated. "We lost probably $40K in revenue before we figured it out," she said.
That opened my eyes to how much geographic location matters for message delivery. Most people running campaigns don't think about infrastructure geography – they focus on content, subject lines, timing. But where your messages physically originate has become critically important to whether they reach inboxes or get filtered. Email providers and mobile carriers evaluate sender reputation, and geographic consistency is now a major factor. If you're a California company sending newsletters to American customers, but emails route through Singapore servers, that mismatch raises red flags. Marketing teams have started investing in infrastructure solutions like american proxies specifically to ensure outbound messaging originates from locations that match their target markets and don't trigger automatic filtering. The difference in deliverability rates can be dramatic – 15-20 percentage point swings in whether messages reach people or disappear into spam.
Why location triggers spam filters
Email and SMS filtering systems evaluate dozens of factors to determine legitimacy, and sender location sits near the top. The logic makes sense – if someone claims to be Bank of America sending alerts, but messages originate from Eastern European IPs, that's probably fraud. The challenge is this scrutiny now applies to legitimate marketing. You're sending newsletters or offers. But if your infrastructure sends messages from locations that don't match your business profile, filtering algorithms treat you like scammers.
Mobile carriers are even stricter. SMS filtering has become aggressive because spam texts have exploded. Carriers analyze sender patterns for anything unusual, and geographic inconsistency is a huge red flag. A New York company sending SMS through Mumbai infrastructure gets filtered heavily. The filtering happens silently. Your analytics just show declining engagement, and you're guessing why.
The infrastructure mismatch problem
Companies choose platforms based on features and price, without considering where they route messages from. That cheap bulk service might look great, but if routing through overseas data centers to cut costs, your deliverability suffers.
Companies expand from domestic to international markets using the same infrastructure. Launch in Europe with messages routing through US servers, and European spam filters hammer them. Start in Asia then expand to North America, face the same problem in reverse.
| Infrastructure Issue | Impact on Deliverability | Detection Time |
|---|---|---|
| Server location mismatch | 10-25% drop | 2-4 weeks |
| IP reputation by region | 15-30% filtering increase | 1-3 weeks |
| Time zone inconsistency | 5-15% reduction | 3-6 weeks |
| Carrier relationship gaps | 20-40% SMS failure | Immediate |
Time zone inconsistency catches people off guard. If emails send during hours that don't make sense for your claimed location, that signals to filtering systems something's off. A New York business sending bulk emails at 3am EST looks suspicious.
Building location-appropriate infrastructure
Companies getting deliverability right match sending infrastructure to target markets deliberately. Run separate infrastructure for different regions. US messages route through US servers. European campaigns use European infrastructure. Asian markets get Asian locations. It's more complex than a single global setup, but deliverability improvements justify it.
IP address reputation is increasingly regional. An IP with excellent European reputation might have zero North American reputation. Email providers in different regions maintain separate databases. You can't transfer good standing – you have to build it locally. Carrier relationships add another layer for SMS. US carriers have completely different requirements than European or Asian carriers. You need infrastructure that integrates properly with local carrier ecosystems. Rachel's company rebuilt their infrastructure with proper geographic routing. Took a month. US deliverability recovered within two weeks – open rates went from 8% to 24%, higher than before the crisis.
Making it sustainable
Setting up location-appropriate infrastructure once isn't enough. Systems need to adapt as your business changes. Monitor deliverability by geographic region, not just overall. Spot location-specific problems before they tank markets. Regional variations often indicate infrastructure issues rather than content problems.
Prepare infrastructure before entering new markets. When expanding to a region, establish locally-appropriate infrastructure first, then launch campaigns. Fixing deliverability after damaging sender reputation is harder than starting with proper setup. Test from target locations. Don't just send test emails to yourself. Use tools showing how messages appear in different regions. Spam filtering varies by location – messages landing in primary inbox in New York might hit spam in London. The technology exists to handle location-based deliverability correctly. Most companies don't realize how much it matters until problems appear. Better to invest in proper infrastructure from the start.
