Your campaigns look good. Your subject lines are solid. But your emails still aren’t landing.

What’s going wrong?

More often than not, it comes down to two things: 

1. An outdated or unverified email list 

2. Poor sender reputation (this is how inbox providers score your trustworthiness based on things like bounce rates, spam complaints, and engagement. A bad score means your emails are more likely to get blocked or sent to spam.)

If your emails are bouncing, being ignored, or landing in spam, this guide breaks down what’s hurting you and what to do about it.

What’s Hurting Your Deliverability

Here’s what commonly derails deliverability:

• Old or invalid addresses

  • High bounce rates signal poor list quality. If more than 2% of your emails bounce, mailbox providers may throttle or block future sends.

• Purchased or scraped lists

  • These often contain unverified or spam trap addresses. They damage your sender reputation — and may violate privacy regulations.

• High spam complaint rates

  •  If more than 0.1% (1 in 1,000 emails) are marked as spam, you risk being blacklisted by providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo.

• No domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)

  • Without these DNS records, your emails are seen as unauthenticated and more likely to be rejected or flagged as spam.

• Sending too many emails too fast

  • Sudden spikes raise red flags. If you're new to email marketing, avoid jumping from 0 to 10,000+ sends. Start small and gradually increase over 2–4 weeks.

• Low engagement

  • If your open rate (the percentage of recipients who open your email) drops below 15% and click-through rate is under 2%, that’s a sign your list is unengaged — and mailbox providers notice. These signals impact your sender score, which in turn affects inbox placement.

The result? Inbox providers flag your domain, or worse, block you altogether.

There are many reasons emails don’t get delivered — but if you solve just two of them, you’ll fix 80% of the problem:
→ Poor list quality
→ Missing or unverified domain setup

That’s because mailbox providers (like Gmail or Outlook) mainly look at:

1. Who you’re sending to (are the contacts valid and engaged?)

2. Who you are (can they verify your domain is trustworthy?)

By fixing these, you drastically reduce bounces, spam filtering, and complaints — even if engagement or timing isn’t perfect yet.

Why start here?
Because these are the easiest fixes to control — and Liven Engage makes them simple:

• List uploads are automatically checked for risk

• Suppression rules prevent sends to invalid or inactive contacts

• You can request help cleaning lists before importing

• Domain authentication is built into onboarding

• You’ll see deliverability alerts directly in your dashboard

So yes, you’ll still want to look at engagement and frequency over time — but if your list is clean and your domain is verified, you’re already ahead of most businesses.

Step 1: Clean Your Email List

List hygiene isn’t optional. Here’s how to do it right:

Remove:

1. Hard bounces – addresses that are invalid or don’t exist

2. Unsubscribes – don’t try to win them back via email

3. Spam complaints – high-risk for domain reputation

Suppress:

1. Soft bounces – if they bounce more than 2–3 times

2. Inactive contacts – people who haven’t opened in 90+ days

3. New imports – validate before sending

Re-engage or remove:

1. Run a re-engagement campaign. If they don’t open, cut them loose.

Need help verifying contacts? 

The Liven Engage team can help clean and validate your email list before you upload it to your account. Just send us the request in advance through Support, and we’ll handle the pre-check for you.

Step 2: Authenticate and Warm Up Your Domain

Even a clean list won’t help if your sender setup is weak.

Do this:

• Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records on your domain

• Send from a consistent subdomain (e.g. email.yourbrand.com)

• If your domain is new, warm it up slowly

  • Start with low volume

  • Increase gradually over 2–4 weeks

• Avoid sudden spikes in sending volume

Here’s a step-by-step guide by the Liven Engage team on how you can update the DNS records on your server.

Step 3: Make List Hygiene a Habit

This isn’t a once-a-year task. Add it to your regular workflow:

Monitor Your Deliverability Metrics

If your rates dip, pause campaigns and audit your list before sending again.

Final Thought

Email deliverability isn’t just a technical detail — it directly impacts whether your customers ever see your message. By cleaning your list regularly, sending only to engaged contacts, and setting up your domain correctly, you’re not just protecting your sender reputation — you’re giving every campaign a real chance to perform.

Need help? Drop us a message through Support. We’re here to make sure your emails reach where they’re supposed to: the inbox.