Skip to main content
Email deliverability is reputation, and reputation can erode quickly. This guide gives you a triage checklist when bounce rate climbs, complaint rate jumps, or your campaigns start landing in spam. The single best tool here is the Deliverability dashboard at /dashboard/marketing/email/deliverability. The Email Coach can run the same triage on demand: “audit my deliverability for the last 30 days.”

​
When to start triaging

You should walk this checklist if any of these are true:
  • Bounce rate is above 2% over the last 7 days.
  • Complaint rate is above 0.05% over the last 7 days.
  • Open rate has dropped 15%+ in the last 30 days with no obvious audience change.
  • AWS SES status shows under review or worse.
  • A specific recent campaign got a noticeably worse response than usual.
The earlier you catch it, the easier the fix.

​
The triage checklist

Walk these in order — most issues resolve at one of the first two steps.

​
1. Domain verification

DKIM, SPF, and DMARC are the three signatures that prove your sends are legitimately you.
1

Check the domain status

Go to Email > Domains. Each domain shows DKIM, SPF, and DMARC status. All three must be green.
2

Re-verify if anything's red

DNS records sometimes get edited or expire. Click Re-verify to re-run the DNS lookup. If a record is missing, the dashboard shows the exact value to add to your DNS provider.
3

Check DMARC alignment

A DMARC record can pass technically but mis-align with your sending domain (e.g., From: says acme.com but DKIM signs mail.acme.com and your DMARC policy is strict). The domain detail page surfaces alignment issues.
If domain verification was the issue, fix it and wait 1-2 hours before sending again. DNS changes take time to propagate to recipient mail servers.

​
2. Recent list quality

A bad list is the most common cause of bounce or complaint spikes. Look for:
  • Hard bounces in the last campaign — the dashboard segments bounces by campaign. If one campaign caused 70%+ of recent bounces, that’s your suspect.
  • Stale audiences — lists older than 6 months without an engagement filter routinely produce 5%+ bounce rates.
  • Imported third-party lists — buying or scraping lists is the #1 way to get suspended. If a recent campaign used an external list, that’s almost certainly the cause.
  • Complaint pattern — complaints clustered on contacts who hadn’t opened in 90+ days suggests the list has gone cold.
Fixes:
  • Suppress the hard-bounced addresses (Hiveku does this automatically, but make sure they’re not still in static audience rosters).
  • Tighten dynamic filters: “opened in the last 90 days” added to a filter typically drops bounce rate by 1-3 percentage points.
  • Run an external email-verification pass on the audience before re-sending.

​
3. Content

Some content patterns trip spam filters or invite complaints:
  • Spammy subject patterns — ALL CAPS, currency symbols, excessive !, urgency language (“ACT NOW”). The template quality check flags these.
  • Image-heavy emails — emails that are 90% images and 10% text are correlated with spam folder placement. Add real text.
  • Missing unsubscribe link — Hiveku auto-injects one if your template lacks it, but verify it’s actually visible.
  • Suspicious links — URL shorteners (bit.ly, etc.) hurt reputation. Use full URLs or Hiveku’s tracking links.
  • No plain-text alternative — Hiveku auto-generates one, but a manual override is sometimes cleaner. Multipart MIME is a deliverability signal.
Run the Quality check on every template you send.

​
4. Engagement

Mailbox providers (especially Gmail and Microsoft) score your reputation per-recipient based on whether your past emails got opened, replied to, or moved to spam. Persistent low engagement = inboxing problems even if your bounce/complaint rates are fine. Signs:
  • Open rate has been falling without a list change.
  • Recipients on Gmail show much lower opens than recipients on other providers.
  • A test campaign to a few colleagues across providers lands in spam folders for some.
Fix by tightening to engaged audiences only for a stretch:
  1. Build a dynamic audience of contacts who opened anything in the last 60 days.
  2. Send only to that audience for the next 4-6 weeks.
  3. Watch open rate climb back as recipients re-engage and reputation rebuilds.
  4. Gradually re-introduce dormant segments once metrics stabilize.

​
5. Warmup

If you’re on a new domain or a fresh dedicated IP, you can blow through a warmup ramp by sending too much too soon. Symptoms:
  • Bounce rate climbs each time you scale a campaign up.
  • Recipients on Gmail consistently show “via” the sending domain (Gmail’s “this sender is new” warning).
  • IP shows up on a Sender Score blocklist with a low score.
Fix: drop volume, follow the warmup ramp (50/200/1000/5000/full), and only scale once Sender Score climbs back into the 90s.

​
Using the dashboard

The deliverability dashboard surfaces concrete suggestions when metrics drift:
  • “Bounce rate climbed from 1.8% to 3.4% in the last 7 days. Campaign ‘April newsletter’ to audience ‘All leads — created 2023+’ contributed 67% of bounces.”
  • “Complaint rate at 0.08%. Most recent complaints came from contacts who hadn’t opened in 180+ days.”
  • “Open rate down 15% in last 30 days, no bounce/complaint change. Possible inboxing issue.”
Each suggestion includes a recommended next action. The coach can execute most of them with one confirmation: “yes, tighten the audience to 90-day openers and re-run the campaign.”

​
When AWS pauses sending

If AWS SES pauses your account, every campaign and sequence stops immediately. To recover:
1

Stop sending

All scheduled campaigns auto-pause. Don’t try to bypass.
2

Find the source

Use the dashboard to identify the campaigns and audiences that contributed to the spike.
3

Clean the list

Remove hard-bounced and complained addresses from any static audiences that include them. Re-verify older lists with an external tool.
4

File a reinstatement request

From the dashboard, click Request reinstatement. The coach drafts a remediation note describing what changed and what you’ll do differently. Reviews typically resolve in 24-48 hours.
5

Resume slowly

Send to your most-engaged segment first. Watch metrics. Gradually expand.

​
Asking the AI coach

The Email Coach has a campaign-deliverability-triage skill specifically for this. Useful prompts:
  • Audit my deliverability for the last 30 days. Rank the top three issues.
  • Why did my bounce rate jump on Tuesday?
  • I’m under AWS review. Walk me through getting reinstated.
  • Suggest a re-engagement plan for our cold subscribers.
The coach reads the same dashboard data you do and runs the diagnostic with full context.

​
Troubleshooting

Account-level health is necessary but not sufficient — Gmail and Microsoft also weigh per-recipient signals. Run a small test campaign and have recipients on different providers report whether it inboxed. If only one provider has the issue, focus there.
Almost always a stale list. Pause any in-flight campaigns immediately and run an external verification pass before re-sending.
Click the blocklist hit in the dashboard for the delisting URL. Most blocklists self-clear if you stop the offending behavior; some require a manual delisting request. The coach can draft the request.
Usually a content issue, not a deliverability one. Recipients are opening but not engaging. Try simpler CTAs or re-write the lead paragraph.

Deliverability dashboard

The metrics view in detail.

Email suppressions

Manage the do-not-send list.

Dedicated IP

When to upgrade and how warmup works.

Raw deliverability

Lower-level controls for transactional email.