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Open rate dropping from 26% to 14%? Broadcasts landing in Promotions? Sudden bounce spike? Deliverability is the silent revenue killer in Keap — every day broken is 10-30% of normal email revenue lost. Here is the diagnostic sequence that finds the actual cause.
Who this is forOperators whose Keap broadcast or campaign open rates have dropped 5+ points over 30 days, or where a recent send landed in spam at scale. If you are getting blocklist alerts or your Domain Reputation in Google Postmaster is 'Low,' this is urgent.
What you'll need
Step 1
Marketing → Broadcasts → Reports. Check bounce rate, complaint rate, open rate trend. Compare to 90-day baseline.
Marketing → Broadcasts → Reports → Deliverability (or per-broadcast reports).
Check 5 numbers across the last 30 days: 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 drift has different root causes.
Keap shares sending infrastructure (no dedicated IPs by default for most accounts) — your reputation depends partly on broader Keap sender behavior, but your domain reputation is independent and is what most ISPs use now.
Step 2
Settings → Email & Broadcast Settings → Sending Domains. All should show Verified. DNS providers occasionally drop records — check.
Settings → Email & Broadcast Settings → Sending Domains → click each domain.
Verify SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all show green/Verified.
If any are red, your DNS host (Cloudflare, Route53, GoDaddy) may have dropped or modified the records. Re-add from the Keap-provided records.
Run external check: mxtoolbox.com → SuperTool → enter your sending domain. Verify SPF, DKIM, DMARC present and well-formed.
Common silent breakage: someone added a second SPF record. Two SPF records on one domain fail BOTH lookups. Run `dig TXT yourdomain.com +short` and check for duplicates.
Step 3
Sender Score (validity.com) and Google Postmaster Tools (Gmail) tell you what ISPs actually think — more honest than Keap's internal metrics.
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 (DNS TXT record). Wait 24-48 hours for data to appear.
In Google Postmaster Tools, check: IP Reputation, Domain Reputation, Authentication, Encryption, Delivery Errors, Spam Rate.
Spam Rate in Postmaster 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 — recovery requires 30-60 days of disciplined sending.
Step 4
Hard bounces >2% over 7 days mean either bad list hygiene OR ISP rejection (blocklist).
Marketing → Broadcasts → click recent broadcast → Bounce Details. Look at hard vs soft bounce split.
Hard bounces = invalid addresses. Should be <2% on a healthy list. >5% over multiple sends = list quality issue (old data, no engagement filtering, possibly a purchased list).
Soft bounces = temporary failures. <3% normal. >10% means the ISP is rejecting you (rate-limited or partially blocklisted).
Pattern: sudden hard-bounce spike right after an import means the import included junk addresses. Pattern: gradual soft-bounce climb means reputation is degrading.
Action: suppress any address that hard-bounced once (CRM → Contacts → filter Email Status = Hard Bounced → bulk Suppress). Re-verify the list with NeverBounce / ZeroBounce ($20-50 per 10K addresses) and re-import the verified list.
Step 5
mxtoolbox.com → Blacklist Check. Enter your sending domain to see if you are listed.
mxtoolbox.com → SuperTool → 'Blacklist Check.' Enter your sending domain.
Common blocklists: Spamhaus, Barracuda, SpamCop, UCEPROTECT, SORBS. Each has a delisting process.
If listed: open a Keap support ticket immediately. Keap has direct relationships with major blocklist operators and can accelerate delisting.
Each blocklist typically requires fixing the underlying issue (high bounce, high complaint) AND waiting 7-30 days for natural 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 have not engaged in 6+ months.
CRM → Contacts → build a Saved Search: 'Has not opened any broadcast in last 180 days' AND 'Has not clicked any broadcast in last 180 days.'
This is your sunset cohort. They are not engaging; ISPs treat your sends to them as spam-like signals.
Two paths: (a) one 'final chance' re-engagement broadcast 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. CRM → Contacts → bulk Suppress. These contacts stop receiving sends but stay in your data for historical reference.
After sunsetting, send a single test broadcast 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 + bounce carefully.
Throughout: zero sends to sunsetted contacts. They are suppressed for a reason.
After 30-60 days of this discipline, Sender Score and Domain Reputation should recover. Test a single full-active-list send 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 do not 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. Net revenue impact: $2K-15K/mo for typical SMB lists.
How to avoid: Sunset cold contacts. Do not send to anyone who has not 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 due to alignment mismatch. Gmail and Yahoo now require DMARC for bulk senders (Feb 2024). Sends land in spam at 30-50% rate for affected ISPs. Open rate looks broken but it's actually folder placement.
How to avoid: Set up proper CNAME-based authentication via Keap'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 it is a DNS misconfiguration — common when someone adds Keap's SPF without merging with existing Google Workspace / Microsoft 365 SPF.
How to avoid: Merge into ONE record: `v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:_spf.keap.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 migrating to a new sending domain. Revenue loss: $5K-50K depending on motion.
How to avoid: Never import a purchased list. If you already have: suppress every imported contact 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 do not check this until open rates have already dropped. By then, recovery takes weeks.
How to avoid: Weekly check: Keap Marketing → Broadcasts → Reports → Complaint Rate. Investigate immediately if it crosses 0.1%. Usually 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 confirmations + invoice delivery + password resets start landing in spam. Refund tickets and 'where is my receipt?' inquiries spike.
How to avoid: Use a subdomain for marketing (`mail.yourbrand.com`) separate from transactional (`yourbrand.com` or `tx.yourbrand.com`). Subdomain segmentation is best practice for any sender doing both.
Recap
Done — what's next
How to set up a Keap account from scratch without painting yourself into a corner
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 sending domain.
See specialist rates
Industry benchmarks 2026: B2C 22-28%, B2B 18-24%, e-com 20-26%, SMB-curated lists often 25-35%. Apple Mail Privacy inflates these by 15-30% (reported 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 all standard Pro and Max accounts. Dedicated IPs are available for very high-volume accounts (typically 100K+ sends/month) via support request. Shared IPs depend on Keap's overall sender reputation; dedicated IPs let you control your own reputation but require disciplined warmup (4-6 weeks). For most SMBs, shared is fine — domain reputation is what ISPs prioritize now anyway.
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 + sender reputation.
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 has not 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. `hello@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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