How to restore a bad sender reputation and fix a low score with MailReach
Read the following warning before going deeper :
⚠️ This article is about restoring the reputation of a USED email address / domain that has sent email campaigns in the past. It's NOT ABOUT new email addresses / domains that don't have any history (these have to be warmed normally). ⚠️
Teaser :
Restoring a damaged sender reputation is possible in 90% of the cases but in some cases, it can be too long to see improvements.
The time needed to fix a damaged reputation is impossible to predict. It depends the level of damage.
The more warming emails are sent from your domain, the faster it improves. It means you can speed up the process by warming multiple inboxes of the domain you need to heal.
To help restoring the reputation, you have to stop sending campaigns. In all cases, continuing to send emails from this domain is a waste since a big part is already landing in spam.
A damaged reputation is the result of bad sending practices on your domain and/or sending IP (for SMTP services). You need to make changes to your practices otherwise you'll face the same problem again. MailReach is an effective boost but it can't magically fix bad sending practices.
This is what you want to see on your MailReach dashboard :
In MailReach > Email Warmer > Find the email account you need to heal and click on Show
Go in Settings > Edit sending and ramp-up volumes
Turn off the Autopilot Mode by clicking on the green selector
In Max sends per day > Set to the maximum > 35 conversations (between 77 and 105 max emails sent per day)
In Starting volume > Set to the maximum > 35 conversations
Do that for every email account that needs to be recovered. Also, warming several mailboxes of that domain improve the healing efficiency by multiplying the volume of warming emails sent and the engagement generated. It will help restore the domain reputation faster.
To restore your sender reputation, you need the highest engagement rate on your domain and associated email addresses during several weeks or for the most damaged domains, several months.
You need to show the big providers like Google and Microsoft that you send mostly relevant and interesting emails.
This is what MailReach does : sending emails from your email addresses and get positives replies, having your emails marked as important, removed from spam, etc.
It tells Google, Microsoft, etc : "I'm a good sender now, people are interested by my emails and don't consider them as spam anymore, you can put me back in inbox."
And to be clear : sending emails with a very low reputation is just waste since you're landing mostly in spam and your recipients don't see your emails. Save your contact lists and stop sending from this domain.
You need to make your domain and associated email addresses REST while MailReach is doing its best to heal it. Give your domain a break in the countryside, at least for several weeks.
That's the best you can do for your domain : 🛌🏾 🛌🏾 💤 💤 🌲🌲 🦌 🐑 🌲🌲 💤 💤 🛌🏾 🛌🏾 . You get it.
From our experience, we know that when your main domain is having spam issues, it can slow down or even stops the business.
This is why, when you rely a lot on email campaigns and especially when doing cold emailing, you need to always have at least one backup.
Also, if you're doing cold emailing and need to send more than 100 cold emails daily, you need to send from several addresses and domains to minimize your risk of landing in spam. This is what we explain in our famous article The Best Cold Email Deliverability Sending Strategy to Avoid Landing in Spam.
Why? Same thing : to have a high engagement rate. That means having a good balance between the volume of emails you send with your own campaigns and the positive interactions you receive.
The practical steps :
Buy one or several new domains using your domain provider. Follow our best practices to choose good domain names to avoid starting with a deliverability handicap. That's in the first section of our Ultimate Deliverability Guide > Choose the right domain and extension for a good deliverability.
Setup SPF, DKIM, DMARC.
For a cold emailing use case : setup 1 email account per domain on Google Workspace or Office 365. For a newsletter / opt-in use case, we recommend Brevo.
Start warming the email account with MailReach to build a good and solid sender reputation.
After 14 days of email warmup (without sending any campaigns), you can start to gradually send campaigns while your damaged domain is getting healed by MailReach.
For a cold emailing use case, never send more than 100 cold emails per day per inbox. Not following this recommendation will lead you to spam in a matter of days.
You need peace of mind. You want to be confident with your email sending to make it work for you and generate a constant flow of leads / conversions without having to worry about spam.
If you have a bad sender reputation it means you need to make changes. If you repeat what you've done before, you'll get similar results.
Of course MailReach helps, that's a solid boost, but as said before, MailReach can't magically fix all your mistakes.
Putting a turbo on a car with flat tires won't fix the car, you HAVE to fix the tires.
But we got your back, we have all the information you need to know to be a true deliverability pro 👑.
Our advice here is simple : READ, RE READ and APPLY the best practices that we listed here :
MUST READ for cold emailing AND opt-in / newsletter sending : How to Prevent Emails From Going to Spam – The Ultimate, No Bullshit Email Deliverability Guide.
MUST READ for cold emailing, the best sending setup : The Best Cold Email Deliverability Sending Strategy to Avoid Landing in Spam.
These two articles are golden nuggets in terms of deliverability. These are the result of years and years of fixing deliverability issues for a lot of companies.
(Re)read them and apply the changes, you will have a better sleep, trust us.
Get ready for this information : you can have a PERFECT sender reputation and STILL LAND IN SPAM.
In MailReach, your graph named "Where your warming emails land" is the best indicator of your sender reputation. If your warming emails land mostly in spam, your email reputation is bad.
On the contrary, if your warming emails land mostly in inbox, it means your email reputation is doing good.
But sender reputation is not the only factor to decide whether you land in spam or inbox.
The other MAJOR factors are :
The content of your emails : words used, links / URL, tracking domain, images, HTML, etc.
Your sending setup : sending IP, provider, DNS, etc.
This is why, when you manage to get a good sender reputation, you need to test the deliverability of your own emails and sending setup.
For that, you just have to use our Email Spam Checker which is included in your MailReach subscription.
To run a proper Spam Test, you need to send the email in the exact same conditions as if you were sending a campaign to your recipients.
That's it, this is the whole process we use at MailReach to restore the email reputation of domains and email addresses that suffer from spam.
Let's make a quick recap on how to restore a damaged email reputation and deliverability :
Raise to the max the volume of warming emails in MailReach for the domain you need to fix
Make your damaged domain and the associated email addresses rest 🛌🏾 🌲 while MailReach is doing its work to recover
Buy one or several new domains to have a back up, split your risk and start on the right foot
Make changes to the way you send your campaigns to minimize the risk of having spam issues again
Use MailReach Spam Test to make sure your content and/or sending setup is not spammy
Enjoy life and stop giving yourself wrinkles because of spam. You deserve better.
⚠️ This article is about restoring the reputation of a USED email address / domain that has sent email campaigns in the past. It's NOT ABOUT new email addresses / domains that don't have any history (these have to be warmed normally). ⚠️
Teaser :
Restoring a damaged sender reputation is possible in 90% of the cases but in some cases, it can be too long to see improvements.
The time needed to fix a damaged reputation is impossible to predict. It depends the level of damage.
The more warming emails are sent from your domain, the faster it improves. It means you can speed up the process by warming multiple inboxes of the domain you need to heal.
To help restoring the reputation, you have to stop sending campaigns. In all cases, continuing to send emails from this domain is a waste since a big part is already landing in spam.
A damaged reputation is the result of bad sending practices on your domain and/or sending IP (for SMTP services). You need to make changes to your practices otherwise you'll face the same problem again. MailReach is an effective boost but it can't magically fix bad sending practices.
This is what you want to see on your MailReach dashboard :
Step 1 : Raise the volume of warming emails in MailReach for the domain and associated addresses you need to fix.
In MailReach > Email Warmer > Find the email account you need to heal and click on Show
Go in Settings > Edit sending and ramp-up volumes
Turn off the Autopilot Mode by clicking on the green selector
In Max sends per day > Set to the maximum > 35 conversations (between 77 and 105 max emails sent per day)
In Starting volume > Set to the maximum > 35 conversations
Do that for every email account that needs to be recovered. Also, warming several mailboxes of that domain improve the healing efficiency by multiplying the volume of warming emails sent and the engagement generated. It will help restore the domain reputation faster.
Step 2 : Stop sending campaigns from this domain. Make the domain rest. In all cases, you're landing mostly in spam so you'd better stop wasting your contacts.
To restore your sender reputation, you need the highest engagement rate on your domain and associated email addresses during several weeks or for the most damaged domains, several months.
You need to show the big providers like Google and Microsoft that you send mostly relevant and interesting emails.
This is what MailReach does : sending emails from your email addresses and get positives replies, having your emails marked as important, removed from spam, etc.
It tells Google, Microsoft, etc : "I'm a good sender now, people are interested by my emails and don't consider them as spam anymore, you can put me back in inbox."
⚠️ BUT if on your end, you keep sending email campaigns, it dilutes and lower the engagement rate generated by MailReach. The consequence is simple : you extend the time to heal your domain or worst : you prevent the healing of your domain.
And to be clear : sending emails with a very low reputation is just waste since you're landing mostly in spam and your recipients don't see your emails. Save your contact lists and stop sending from this domain.
You need to make your domain and associated email addresses REST while MailReach is doing its best to heal it. Give your domain a break in the countryside, at least for several weeks.
That's the best you can do for your domain : 🛌🏾 🛌🏾 💤 💤 🌲🌲 🦌 🐑 🌲🌲 💤 💤 🛌🏾 🛌🏾 . You get it.
Step 3 : Buy one or several new domains and make them start on the right foot [RECOMMENDED]
From our experience, we know that when your main domain is having spam issues, it can slow down or even stops the business.
This is why, when you rely a lot on email campaigns and especially when doing cold emailing, you need to always have at least one backup.
Also, if you're doing cold emailing and need to send more than 100 cold emails daily, you need to send from several addresses and domains to minimize your risk of landing in spam. This is what we explain in our famous article The Best Cold Email Deliverability Sending Strategy to Avoid Landing in Spam.
Why? Same thing : to have a high engagement rate. That means having a good balance between the volume of emails you send with your own campaigns and the positive interactions you receive.
The practical steps :
Buy one or several new domains using your domain provider. Follow our best practices to choose good domain names to avoid starting with a deliverability handicap. That's in the first section of our Ultimate Deliverability Guide > Choose the right domain and extension for a good deliverability.
Setup SPF, DKIM, DMARC.
For a cold emailing use case : setup 1 email account per domain on Google Workspace or Office 365. For a newsletter / opt-in use case, we recommend Brevo.
Start warming the email account with MailReach to build a good and solid sender reputation.
After 14 days of email warmup (without sending any campaigns), you can start to gradually send campaigns while your damaged domain is getting healed by MailReach.
For a cold emailing use case, never send more than 100 cold emails per day per inbox. Not following this recommendation will lead you to spam in a matter of days.
Step 4 : Make changes to your way of sending your campaigns. If not, you'll suffer from spam again 🩸
You need peace of mind. You want to be confident with your email sending to make it work for you and generate a constant flow of leads / conversions without having to worry about spam.
If you have a bad sender reputation it means you need to make changes. If you repeat what you've done before, you'll get similar results.
Of course MailReach helps, that's a solid boost, but as said before, MailReach can't magically fix all your mistakes.
Putting a turbo on a car with flat tires won't fix the car, you HAVE to fix the tires.
But we got your back, we have all the information you need to know to be a true deliverability pro 👑.
Our advice here is simple : READ, RE READ and APPLY the best practices that we listed here :
MUST READ for cold emailing AND opt-in / newsletter sending : How to Prevent Emails From Going to Spam – The Ultimate, No Bullshit Email Deliverability Guide.
MUST READ for cold emailing, the best sending setup : The Best Cold Email Deliverability Sending Strategy to Avoid Landing in Spam.
These two articles are golden nuggets in terms of deliverability. These are the result of years and years of fixing deliverability issues for a lot of companies.
(Re)read them and apply the changes, you will have a better sleep, trust us.
Step 5 : Make sure your email content and/or sending setup is not spammy
Get ready for this information : you can have a PERFECT sender reputation and STILL LAND IN SPAM.
In MailReach, your graph named "Where your warming emails land" is the best indicator of your sender reputation. If your warming emails land mostly in spam, your email reputation is bad.
On the contrary, if your warming emails land mostly in inbox, it means your email reputation is doing good.
But sender reputation is not the only factor to decide whether you land in spam or inbox.
The other MAJOR factors are :
The content of your emails : words used, links / URL, tracking domain, images, HTML, etc.
Your sending setup : sending IP, provider, DNS, etc.
This is why, when you manage to get a good sender reputation, you need to test the deliverability of your own emails and sending setup.
For that, you just have to use our Email Spam Checker which is included in your MailReach subscription.
To run a proper Spam Test, you need to send the email in the exact same conditions as if you were sending a campaign to your recipients.
Conclusion and recap
That's it, this is the whole process we use at MailReach to restore the email reputation of domains and email addresses that suffer from spam.
Let's make a quick recap on how to restore a damaged email reputation and deliverability :
Raise to the max the volume of warming emails in MailReach for the domain you need to fix
Make your damaged domain and the associated email addresses rest 🛌🏾 🌲 while MailReach is doing its work to recover
Buy one or several new domains to have a back up, split your risk and start on the right foot
Make changes to the way you send your campaigns to minimize the risk of having spam issues again
Use MailReach Spam Test to make sure your content and/or sending setup is not spammy
Enjoy life and stop giving yourself wrinkles because of spam. You deserve better.
Updated on: 06/06/2024
Thank you!