How to Recover and Improve Your Email Sender Reputation

Learn how to rebuild your sender reputation if your emails are landing in spam or performance has dropped—and how to prevent future deliverability issues.

You likely need to take action if you notice:

If you’re unsure, start with Getting Started with Email Deliverability Monitoring and Performance Metrics to validate your trends.

Your sender reputation determines whether your emails reach the inbox or get filtered out.

Inbox providers evaluate:

Learn more in Understanding Sender Reputation.

Some automated emails naturally have lower engagement and can hurt your reputation during recovery.

These campaigns target inactive users and can generate poor engagement signals.

If you’re using external tools or agencies to send emails on your behalf:

Pause all third-party sending activity

Why this matters:

Focus only on first-party data and controlled campaigns during recovery.

Repairing your reputation requires going back to basics.

This process is similar to warming—review Understanding Ramping vs. Warming for context.

Continuing to email inactive users is one of the biggest causes of poor reputation.

Avoid sending to users who haven’t engaged in a year unless they re-subscribe.

Also, review Understanding Spam Traps to avoid hidden risks.

A branded domain improves trust and gives you control over your reputation.

Learn more in What is a Branded Sending Subdomain?

If you’re using a new or recently set up domain:

Follow Understanding Which Warming Process to Use

Warming builds trust with inbox providers and prevents sudden spam filtering.

For higher sending volumes:

Learn more in Understanding Dedicated IP Warming

Using your own domain for links:

Misaligned domains can cause emails to be flagged or blocked.

Review:

Proper authentication helps inbox providers trust your emails.

Recovery doesn’t happen instantly—you need to track progress.

Use Getting Started with Email Deliverability Monitoring and Performance Metrics for benchmarks.

If you notice performance declining again:

Immediately go back to sending only to your most engaged users. This helps stabilize your reputation before expanding again.

Once recovered, maintain strong practices:

Also refer to:

If you’ve implemented DMARC, you can go further with BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification):

Repairing sender reputation requires discipline and patience.

Recovery typically takes 2–4 weeks, depending on the severity of the issue.