email-best-practices

Use it when:: You're adding email to an app, or emails land in spam, bounce, or need to meet CAN-SPAM, GDPR or CASL.
It does:: Sends the agent to the one reference that fits: deliverability, transactional or marketing email, capture, compliance, sending, webhooks, lists or accessibility.
Starts from:: A map of the path from signup form through double opt-in, suppression checks and idempotent sends to webhook events and list cleanup.
Suggests an order:: For a new app, plan which emails it needs, then set up DNS authentication before sending the first one.

TL;DR

Guidance from Resend for email that gets delivered, stays legal and is easy to read. A quick-reference table points the agent to eleven reference files: deliverability (SPF, DKIM, DMARC and spam fixes), transactional emails such as password resets and one-time codes, a catalog of the emails an app typically needs, email capture and validation, newsletters and promotions, CAN-SPAM, GDPR and CASL compliance, telling transactional from marketing email, retries and idempotent sending, delivery webhooks, bounce and complaint handling with suppression lists, and accessibility (lang and dir, presentational tables, headings, alt text, title and contrast). It also lays out paths through them: for spam problems, check authentication first, since Gmail and Yahoo reject unauthenticated mail; for marketing email, collect consent, check the legal requirements, then send; for production sending, add retries and idempotency, then webhooks to track delivery, then bounce handling.

Summarizes the skill at cf5438c.

npx skills add https://github.com/resend/email-best-practices --skill email-best-practices

skills.sh page Source on GitHub All skills from resend/email-best-practices

Weekly Downloads week to Nov 9, 2026

0% in 8 weeks

Fewer weekly downloads than 85% of skills

Weekly values

Week to	Installs
Sep 21	77
Sep 28	76
Oct 5	78
Oct 12	95
Oct 19	86
Oct 26	90
Nov 2	73
Nov 9	77

Total Downloads on skills.sh

8,200

Fewer downloads than 59% of skills

Repo stars resend/email-best-practices

147

Fewer stars than 97% of repos

Age published Jan 23, 2026

9 months

Older than 79% of skills

Category	category:marketing SEO, copy, conversion, social media and e-commerce.
Type	type:guidelines Knowledge and rules the agent applies while it works: best practices, design principles, API references.
Effect	effect:none Adds no side effects of its own. It shapes how the agent thinks, writes or reviews. Guidelines and routers are always effect:none, even when the task they support edits code.
Needs	needs:none Instructions only. Works in any agent that supports skills.
Publisher	by:community Everyone else. Unverified vendor claims default to community.
Topics	email backend accessibility marketing
Flags	flag:mirror The same publisher ships the skill under two sources, which splits its counts.

SKILL.md

From resend/email-best-practices at cf5438c. Checked daily, last changed Nov 6, 2026.

Frontmatter

name: email-best-practices
description: Use when building email features, emails going to spam, high bounce rates, setting up SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication, implementing email capture, ensuring compliance (CAN-SPAM, GDPR, CASL), handling webhooks, retry logic, making emails accessible (alt text, headings, contrast, screen readers), or deciding transactional vs marketing.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Resend
  version: "1.0.2"
  homepage: https://resend.com/agent-skills
  source: https://github.com/resend/email-best-practices
  openclaw:
    links:
      repository: https://github.com/resend/email-best-practices
      documentation: https://resend.com/docs/email-best-practices-skill

Email Best Practices

Guidance for building deliverable, compliant, user-friendly emails.

Architecture Overview

[User] → [Email Form] → [Validation] → [Double Opt-In]
                                              ↓
                                    [Consent Recorded]
                                              ↓
[Suppression Check] ←──────────────[Ready to Send]
        ↓
[Idempotent Send + Retry] ──────→ [Email API]
                                       ↓
                              [Webhook Events]
                                       ↓
              ┌────────┬────────┬─────────────┐
              ↓        ↓        ↓             ↓
         Delivered  Bounced  Complained  Opened/Clicked
                       ↓        ↓
              [Suppression List Updated]
                       ↓
              [List Hygiene Jobs]

Quick Reference

Need to...	See
Set up SPF/DKIM/DMARC, fix spam issues	Deliverability
Build password reset, OTP, confirmations	Transactional Emails
Plan which emails your app needs	Transactional Email Catalog
Build newsletter signup, validate emails	Email Capture
Send newsletters, promotions	Marketing Emails
Ensure CAN-SPAM/GDPR/CASL compliance	Compliance
Decide transactional vs marketing	Email Types
Handle retries, idempotency, errors	Sending Reliability
Process delivery events, set up webhooks	Webhooks & Events
Manage bounces, complaints, suppression	List Management
Make emails accessible (screen readers, alt text, contrast)	Accessibility

Start Here

New app? Start with the Catalog to plan which emails your app needs (password reset, verification, etc.), then set up Deliverability (DNS authentication) before sending your first email.

Spam issues? Check Deliverability first—authentication problems are the most common cause. Gmail/Yahoo reject unauthenticated emails.

Marketing emails? Follow this path: Email Capture (collect consent) → Compliance (legal requirements) → Marketing Emails (best practices).

Production-ready sending? Add reliability: Sending Reliability (retry + idempotency) → Webhooks & Events (track delivery) → List Management (handle bounces).

Accessibility? Most emails fail basic accessibility checks. See Accessibility for lang/dir, presentational tables, headings, alt text, <title>, and contrast.