Trust beats tactics™

Deliverability emergency

Your email’s making less money and you can’t see why.

You’re not the first. And it’s usually one of five things.

Open rates cratered or bounces spiked, and nothing you changed explains it. Below are the five causes I check first, in the order I check them. Read your own symptom, run the checks, and if none of them fit, write to me and we’ll figure it out together.

Talk to me now Or run the 5 checks below

A real person replies, not a chatbot. I reply within 48–72 hours.

Yanna-Torry Aspraki, looking at the camera. She’s the founder.

Yanna-Torry Aspraki

Litmus Coach 2020·Ask a Deliverability Expert·8,000+ lists reviewed·Lenovo Twinning Finalist

Your last three sends

May issue · same list, same offer21.4% opened
June issue · nothing changed14.9% opened
July issue · still nothing changed8.2% opened

Same list. Same offer. Less money every send.

The symptom is visible. The cause is findable.

01What to check first

The five usual suspects

Nine times out of ten a deliverability drop traces back to one of these five. Work them in order. If the first two come up clean, one of the last three is almost certainly your answer.

01

Authentication broke

Here’s how you know

A certificate renewed, a coworker touched your DNS, or a record quietly stopped matching, and bounces suddenly spike. Complaints can jump too when the change breaks your List-Unsubscribe header and readers hit the spam button instead.

Here’s where to start

Pull your current SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records and check whether they still align with your sending domain. Run all three of our free tools together: the SPF checker, the DMARC parser, and the header analyzer.

If not, write to me and we’ll figure it out together.

02

Reputation tanked, complaints climbing

Here’s how you know

Open rate takes an unusual spike or drop that doesn’t match your normal pattern. Click rate moves with it. Nothing in your content or send cadence changed. A drop is the obvious signal, but a spike is worth the same attention. It often means a spam filter is opening and checking your links for you, and every one of those bot opens is hiding the real engagement number underneath.

Here’s where to start

Segment your list into last-30-days-active vs the rest. Send only to the active segment for a couple of campaigns. Watch the active segment for a consistent amount of time, don’t be impatient, and see what happens. If deliverability recovers on the active segment, the rest of your list needs to be thoroughly analyzed so you can segment out the emails hurting your reputation.

If not, write to me and we’ll figure it out together.

03

Your list went stale

Here’s how you know

You have not sent in three or more months. Or you imported a list and sent to the whole thing at once. Your bounce rate is 5%+ and your engagement is under 10%.

Here’s where to start

Over 26% of email lists decay every year and go invalid. If you are due, that is what is happening. Clean before you send again. RME Clean gives you a Keep, Monitor, or Suppress verdict on every address with the reason behind each call.

If not, write to me and we’ll figure it out together.

04

You migrated or switched tools wrong

Here’s how you know

You changed ESPs, added a subdomain, or moved your sending to a new tool, and bounces spiked right after. The timing lines up with the switch.

Here’s where to start

Any recent ESP switch, subdomain add, or DNS edit can silently break alignment, so check card 01 first. Once auth is clean, walk backward through everything else you touched, one revert at a time, until delivery recovers.

If not, write to me and we’ll figure it out together.

05

A blocklist caught your domain

Here’s how you know

Bounces mention a blocklist by name in the SMTP response. Quickest way to confirm: run your sending domain and IP through our blocklist checker, then cross-check the domain in Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) if you send to Outlook or Hotmail. Open rates dropped hard across every campaign, not just one segment.

Here’s where to start

Run your sending IP and domain through the free blocklist checker. If you are listed, follow the delisting form for the specific list that flagged you. Most publish their process.

If not, write to me and we’ll figure it out together.

02When the five don’t fit

Sometimes it’s none of those.

I’ll tell you what it is. Sometimes a drop isn’t deliverability related at all.

Talk to me now

Free. No clock. I reply within 48–72 hours.

03Before you hit send

What I need from you when you write

Sets expectation, saves triage time. Bring what you can. We’ll work with whatever you have.

Triage checklist · paste into your message
The numbers that name the cause Any format works
  • Sends per campaign, so we can see how many landed in your queue
  • Delivered numbers (sends minus hard bounces) so we can spot silent throttling
  • Unique opens and open rate for the last 3 to 5 campaigns
  • Unique clicks and click rate for the same window
  • Complaints (spam-button hits), split by campaign if you have it
  • Unsubscribes, split by campaign
  • Soft and hard bounces, split out. Soft is a signal, hard is a bounce.
  • ESP name (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, HubSpot, whatever you use)
  • Sending domain
  • Screenshot of your deliverability dashboard (Google Postmaster, your ESP dashboard, whatever you have)

Send whatever you have. If you’re not sure something is relevant, send it anyway and I’ll tell you what matters.

04If the reply reveals more

If it turns into real work

Clean

Sometimes the first reply reveals it needs list cleaning. That’s RME Clean.

Insights

Sometimes it needs ongoing intelligence across every email tool you use. That’s RME Insights (currently in tester program, free during testing plus two free months after launch).

Either way

We figure out which one first. No pressure to buy anything when you write. Ever.

Asking is always free. There’s no clock.

I’ve been in email for a decade and I’ve seen this exact pattern hundreds of times. Whatever broke, we can name it fast, and I’ll tell you honestly whether you can fix it yourself or whether it needs one of the products behind this site.

Talk to me now

No chatbot. No ticket queue. I reply within 48–72 hours.

Your email is making less money and you can’t see why. That’s not a mystery. It’s one of five causes, and we can name it.

Write to me. A real reply, from me, within 48–72 hours.

Yanna-Torry Aspraki, sitting at a desk, looking at the camera. She’s the founder.

Yanna-Torry Aspraki

Founder, Review My Emails