Maintaining a healthy sender reputation is the key to making sure your emails consistently reach your customers’ inboxes. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo evaluate every sender based on both IP reputation and domain reputation. In fact, a domain’s reputation is often just as important — and sometimes more important — than the IP address being used.
Recommended Metrics to Aim For (30-Day Rolling Cycle)
Open Rate: at least 10–12%
Unsubscribe Rate: no higher than 1–2%
Hard Bounce Rate: no higher than 2–3%
Complaint Rate (Span Reports): no higher than 0.2%
These thresholds are considered healthy by the industry and are where you should aim to stay in order to maintain consistent inbox placement.
How to Check Your Metrics
Go to your Insights page and open the Campaigns tab. Under Email, you’ll find your deliverability metrics. These update as you send more emails and are tracked on a rolling 30-day basis.
Understanding Different Email Statuses
Bounced: The recipient’s mail server rejected the email (invalid address, mailbox full, or domain issue).
Dropped: The email was not sent because the address is suppressed (previous bounce, spam, or unsubscribe).
Unsubscribed: The recipient opted out of future emails by clicking “unsubscribe.”
Spam Complaint: The recipient marked the email as spam — sending to this address is stopped to protect your reputation.
Use Your Own Verified Domain
We strongly recommend verifying your own custom domain and sending emails directly from it. This not only improves deliverability but also builds your domain reputation over time.
Benefits of using a custom domain:
Higher open rates — recipients recognize and trust your brand.
Fewer spam reports — customers are less likely to mark your messages as spam if they see your domain.
Stronger reputation — helps you remain in healthy IP pools and maintain consistency.
How TrueReview Helps
TrueReview automatically uses rate limiting to smooth out email delivery and reduce the chance of mail server throttling. This means your emails are delivered in a way that mailbox providers trust more, improving overall performance.
If your metrics go above safe thresholds, TrueReview may send your emails from different pools of IP addresses based on your sender reputation. This protects overall deliverability and ensures that senders with cleaner reputations aren’t impacted by higher-risk traffic.
If a customer marks your email as spam, TrueReview will stop all follow-up messages and block future sends to that address in order to protect your sender reputation. The same applies to emails that are dropped or result in a hard bounce.
Final Tip
The best way to maintain a great reputation is simple:
Send only to valid email addresses
Make sure customers have opted in and genuinely want to receive your review requests
Verify and send from your own domain to build lasting trust and reputation
By following these practices, you’ll enjoy stronger deliverability, higher engagement, and reliable results from your email campaigns.