Why it matters
An email that lands in a spam folder might as well not have been sent. For a small business, a handful of bad sends can damage the domain’s reputation for months, and that damage spreads to everyday emails like invoices and appointment confirmations.
Deliverability is not the same as delivery. “Delivered” usually means the receiving server accepted the message. Deliverability is about whether it was then put in front of the person.
What affects it
| Factor | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Authentication | SPF, DKIM and DMARC records prove the email really came from your domain |
| Sender reputation | Mailbox providers track how your past emails were received |
| Bounces | Sending to addresses that do not exist signals a poor list |
| Complaints | People marking you as spam is the strongest negative signal |
| Engagement | Messages people open and click help; ignored ones hurt |
| Volume patterns | Sudden large sends from a quiet domain look suspicious |
How to protect it
- Authenticate your domain with the email provider you send through, before your first campaign.
- Send only to people who agreed to hear from you, and make unsubscribing easy.
- Remove hard bounces immediately and stop sending to addresses that keep soft-bouncing.
- Honour complaints by suppressing anyone who marks you as spam.
- Keep a steady rhythm instead of rare, very large blasts.
- Separate marketing from day-to-day mail where you can, so a campaign problem does not affect invoices and replies.
Common mistakes
- Buying or scraping lists. It produces bounces and complaints almost every time.
- Re-mailing old lists without cleaning them. Addresses go stale, and some old addresses are turned into spam traps.
- Ignoring the numbers. A rising bounce or complaint rate is an early warning.
- No frequency limit. Overlapping campaigns can send one person far more than they expect.
A quick checklist before your next campaign
- Is the sending domain authenticated with SPF, DKIM and DMARC through your email provider?
- Has everyone on the list agreed to hear from you, and is unsubscribing one click?
- Have hard bounces and past complainers been removed?
- Is the send a normal size for your domain, rather than a sudden spike?
- Does the subject line describe the email honestly?
- Do you know what a healthy bounce and complaint rate looks like for your past sends, so you will notice if this one is different?
How GuardenerAI handles it
- GuardenerAI Marketing sends email through a provider you connect: SendGrid, Amazon SES, Mailgun, Postmark or your own SMTP server. Domain authentication is set up with that provider.
- Suppressions are applied automatically for hard bounces, repeated soft bounces past a threshold, spam complaints, invalid addresses, unsubscribes and manual additions.
- Every marketing email carries an unsubscribe link to a public unsubscribe page, and consent is kept per channel and topic.
- A frequency policy and a daily send cap stop any one person being over-messaged.
- Each email campaign reports sent, accepted, delivered, bounced, opened, clicked and unsubscribed on one overview.
- Duplicate and validation rules in Automation keep bad addresses out of the CRM in the first place.