Sender Reputation Damaged: Recovery & Prevention Guide
Your sender reputation score (domain or IP) is low or declining
Act within 24-48 hours to prevent further damage.
Check reputation across all ISPs:
Run the email health check tool to see overall sender reputation
Check Google Postmaster Tools for Gmail-specific reputation
Review your ESP dashboard for reputation metrics
Check if it's your domain reputation or IP reputation
What Could Be Causing This?
Spam Complaint Spike (Recent Campaign)
Most CommonA single campaign to low-engagement recipients or spam trap addresses spikes complaints, damaging reputation.
How to confirm:
Check complaint rate timeline in Google Postmaster Tools.
High Bounce Rate (Bad List Quality)
Most CommonBounce rates above 3% signal poor list quality. Multiple sends to invalid addresses damage reputation.
How to confirm:
Check ESP bounce reports. Did you recently add or import a list?
Shared IP Pool Abuse (Other Senders)
CommonIf on shared IPs, bad behavior by other senders on your pool damages everyone's reputation.
How to confirm:
Check with your ESP — are other senders on your IP pool behaving badly?
Low Engagement (Recipients Not Opening)
CommonIf 60%+ of recipients ignore your emails, ISPs assume the emails are unwanted.
How to confirm:
Check open rates. If <10%, engagement is the issue.
Fix Playbook
Step 1: Immediately Reduce Sending Volume by 50-75%
- Stop all sends except to top 20% of engaged subscribers
- Monitor complaint and bounce rates for 24-48 hours
- Reputation damage is caused by volume + quality ratio — lower volume helps repair reputation
Step 2: Clean Your List & Remove Problem Addresses
- Remove all hard bounces (invalid addresses)
- Remove unengaged subscribers (no opens in 90+ days)
- Remove recent spam complainers
- Validate remaining list with a third-party service if bounce rate was high
- This reduces complaint and bounce rates, helping reputation recover
Step 3: Gradually Resume Sending as Reputation Recovers
- Monitor reputation daily using email health check tool
- After 3-5 days of low-volume sending with no complaint spikes, expand to next engagement tier
- Send only 1-2 times per week during recovery (vs. your normal frequency)
- Wait 1-2 weeks before resuming normal sending volume
Prevention Checklist
- Monitor reputation monthly
- Keep bounce rate below 2%
- Keep complaint rate below 0.1%
- Monitor engagement — don't let open rates drop below 10%
- Validate all imported lists before sending
- Clean list every 90 days
- Use InboxEagle to track reputation changes in real-time
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