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Open rates dropping from 28% to 16%, campaigns landing in Promotions, sudden bounce spikes? Deliverability is the silent killer of email revenue. Here is the diagnostic sequence specialists run before suggesting any fix.
Who this is forOperators whose ActiveCampaign open rate has dropped 5+ points over 30 days, or where a recent campaign landed in spam widely. If you're getting 'IP on a blocklist' alerts, this is urgent — every day compounds the damage.
What you'll need
Step 1
ActiveCampaign → Reports → Deliverability. Check bounce rate, complaint rate, open rate trend.
ActiveCampaign → Reports → Deliverability.
Check 5 numbers: Bounce rate (<2% target), Spam complaint rate (<0.1% target), Open rate (>20% target), Click rate (>1% target), Unsubscribe rate (<0.5% target).
Bounce rate >2% or complaint rate >0.1% means ISPs are starting to filter you. Open rate dropping 5+ points in 30 days is the most reliable signal something changed.
Compare to a 90-day baseline. Sudden changes are diagnostic — slow drifts have different root causes.
If you're on a shared IP (Lite, Plus, smaller Pro accounts), your reputation depends on other AC senders too. AC manages this aggressively, but you can be affected indirectly.
Step 2
ActiveCampaign → Settings → Advanced → Email & SMS. All three should show green/Verified. DNS providers occasionally drop records — check.
ActiveCampaign → Settings → Advanced → Email & SMS → 'Authenticate your domain' section.
Verify each of SPF, DKIM, DMARC shows green/Verified status.
If any are red, your DNS host (Cloudflare, Route53, GoDaddy) may have dropped or modified the records. Re-add them from the AC instructions.
Run an external check: mxtoolbox.com → SuperTool → enter your sending domain. Verify SPF, DKIM, DMARC are all present and well-formed.
Common silent breakage: someone added a second SPF record (two SPF records fail both lookups). Run `dig TXT yourdomain.com` and check for duplicates.
Step 3
Sender Score (validity.com) and Google Postmaster Tools (Gmail) tell you what ISPs actually think.
validity.com → Sender Score → enter your sending domain. Score above 80 is healthy; 60-80 is degraded; below 60 is in trouble.
postmaster.google.com → add your sending domain → verify ownership. Wait 24-48 hours for data.
In Postmaster Tools, check: IP Reputation, Domain Reputation, Authentication, Encryption, Delivery Errors, Spam Rate.
Spam Rate in Postmaster Tools should be below 0.1%. Above 0.3% triggers Gmail filtering aggressively.
Domain Reputation should be 'Medium' or 'High.' 'Low' or 'Bad' means Gmail is actively penalizing your sends.
Step 4
Hard bounces >2% over 7 days mean either bad list hygiene OR ISP rejection (blocklist).
ActiveCampaign → Reports → Campaigns → recent campaigns → 'Bounce details.' Look at hard vs soft bounce split.
Hard bounces = invalid addresses. Should be <2% on a healthy list. >5% over multiple campaigns = list quality issue (old data, no engagement filtering).
Soft bounces = temporary failures. <3% is normal. >10% means the ISP is rejecting you (rate-limited or partially blocklisted).
Pattern: a sudden hard-bounce spike right after an import means the import included junk addresses. Pattern: a gradual soft-bounce climb means reputation is degrading.
Action: clean the list. Suppress any address that hard-bounced once. Re-verify the list via a validator (NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, Bouncer) — costs $20-50 per 10K addresses and pays for itself in reputation recovery.
Step 5
mxtoolbox.com → Blacklist Check. Enter your sending domain AND any IP ActiveCampaign uses.
mxtoolbox.com → SuperTool → 'Blacklist Check.' Enter your domain.
If on a dedicated IP (Pro+ Enterprise), enter the IP too. AC support can tell you which IP.
Common blocklists: Spamhaus, Barracuda, SpamCop, UCEPROTECT. Each has a delisting process — typically requires fixing the underlying issue (high bounce, high complaint) and waiting 7-30 days.
If listed: open a ticket with AC support immediately. They have direct relationships with major blocklist operators and can accelerate delisting.
DO NOT send more email while blocklisted. Sending makes it worse.
Step 6
The single highest-ROI deliverability action: stop sending to people who haven't engaged in 6+ months.
Build a segment: 'Has not opened any campaign in last 180 days' AND 'Has not clicked any campaign in last 180 days.'
This segment is your sunset cohort. They're not engaging; ISPs treat your sends to them as spam-like behavior.
Two paths: (a) one 'final chance' re-engagement campaign with a soft CTA ('still want to hear from us?'), then suppress non-responders. (b) suppress immediately, no re-engagement.
Path (b) is more aggressive but cleaner. ActiveCampaign → Contacts → bulk → 'Suppress.' These contacts stop receiving sends but stay in your data.
After sunsetting, send a single test campaign to your remaining active list. Open rate should jump 5-10 points within 14 days as ISPs see engagement improving.
Step 7
After fixing the underlying issue, recovery takes 30-60 days of clean sending to your most engaged contacts only.
Week 1: send ONLY to contacts who opened in the last 30 days. Aim for 30%+ open rate.
Week 2: add contacts who opened in the last 60 days. Maintain 25%+ open rate.
Week 3-4: add contacts who opened in the last 90 days. Maintain 20%+ open rate.
Week 5+: gradually re-add 180-day-active contacts. Monitor open rate and bounce rate carefully.
Throughout: zero sends to sunsetted contacts. They're suppressed for a reason.
After 30-60 days of this discipline, Sender Score and Domain Reputation should recover. Test a single send to the full active list at day 60; if metrics hold, return to normal cadence.
Common mistakes
Sending to cold contacts to "wake them up"
What goes wrong: Cold contacts don't open. High non-open rate signals spam to ISPs. Sender reputation drops further. Open rate falls another 5-10 points within 2 weeks. The fix becomes the cause.
How to avoid: Sunset cold contacts. Don't send to anyone who hasn't engaged in 180+ days. Cleaner list = better deliverability = better engagement on the remaining list.
Ignoring DMARC alignment
What goes wrong: SPF and DKIM pass independently but DMARC fails because of alignment mismatch. Gmail and Yahoo now require DMARC for bulk senders (since Feb 2024). Sends land in spam at 30-50% rate for affected ISPs.
How to avoid: Set up proper CNAME-based authentication via ActiveCampaign's domain authentication. Verify DMARC alignment with mxtoolbox or dmarcian.
Two SPF records in DNS
What goes wrong: SPF lookup fails. Email lands in spam at 20-40% rate. Looks like a deliverability problem but is a DNS misconfiguration — common when someone adds AC's SPF without merging with existing Google/Microsoft SPF.
How to avoid: Merge into one record: `v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:_spf.activecampaign.com ~all`. Never have two SPF TXT records on the same domain.
Importing a purchased list
What goes wrong: Purchased lists have 20-40% invalid addresses + 5-15% spam-trap addresses. First send hard-bounces at 15%+. Sender reputation crashes within 24 hours. Recovery takes 60-90 days minimum, sometimes requires a new domain.
How to avoid: Never import a purchased list. If you've already done so, suppress all imports immediately and start the 30-day recovery cadence on your organic list only.
Not monitoring complaint rate
What goes wrong: Complaint rate >0.1% on Gmail and ISPs start filtering. Most operators don't check this until open rates have already dropped. By then, recovery takes weeks.
How to avoid: Weekly check: AC Reports → Deliverability → Complaint Rate. Set up an alert if it crosses 0.1%. Investigate immediately — usually a too-aggressive cadence or wrong segment targeting.
Mixing transactional and marketing on the same sending domain
What goes wrong: A marketing reputation hit drags down transactional deliverability. Order-confirmation emails start landing in spam. Refund requests and 'where's my order?' tickets spike.
How to avoid: Use a subdomain for marketing (`mail.yourbrand.com`) separate from transactional (`yourbrand.com` or `tx.yourbrand.com`). This is called subdomain segmentation and is best practice for any sender doing both.
Recap
Done — what's next
How to set up an ActiveCampaign account the right way
Read the next tutorial
Hand it off
Deliverability problems compound — every day broken is 10-30% of normal revenue lost. A specialist deliverability audit takes 4-6 hours and is typically $300-600 at $14-16/hr. Recovery programs run 30-60 days at $400-800/mo for ongoing monitoring + warmup execution. Worth it: the alternative is migrating to a new domain.
See specialist rates
Industry benchmarks 2026: B2C 22-28%, B2B 18-24%, e-com 20-26%. Apple Mail Privacy inflates these by 15-30% (so 'reported' open rate is higher than actual engagement). Healthy click rate is 1-3%. Below those benchmarks consistently = deliverability issue or list quality issue.
30-60 days of disciplined sending to engaged contacts only. After fixing the root cause (cold list, broken auth, complaint spike), reputation rebuilds gradually. There is no quick fix. Anyone promising 'instant deliverability recovery' is lying.
Shared by default on Lite, Plus, and most Pro accounts. Dedicated IPs are available on higher-volume Pro and Enterprise (typically 100K+ sends/month required). Shared IPs depend on AC's overall sender reputation; dedicated IPs let you control your own reputation but require disciplined warmup (4-6 weeks).
Three usual causes: (1) ISPs are filtering you to Promotions/Spam tab (open rate captured but folder placement is bad), (2) Apple Mail Privacy changed the open-rate denominator, (3) cold contacts dragging down engagement signals. Run a seed-inbox test (Mail-Tester, GlockApps) to confirm placement. If Promotions, work on engagement signals.
Last resort. New domains require 4-6 weeks of warmup before any meaningful send volume. Try recovery first — sunset cold list + disciplined send to engaged-only + 60 days patience. If after 60 days reputation hasn't recovered, then consider a domain change as a strategic move with full warmup.
Yes — and Gmail/Yahoo now reject this for bulk senders (since Feb 2024). You MUST send from a domain you control. `info@yourbrand.com`, not `yourbrand@gmail.com`. Sending from free providers as the From address fails DMARC alignment and goes straight to spam.
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