How to Monitor Email Deliverability and Avoid Spam
Track email performance metrics and take action to ensure your messages reach candidate inboxes.
Key deliverability metrics
Bounce rate
Percentage of emails that failed to deliver.
- Target: Under 5%
- Warning: Above 10% indicates list quality issues
Open rate
Percentage of delivered emails that were opened.
- Good: 20-40% for recruiting emails
- Low: Below 10% signals spam folder issues
Reply rate
Percentage of recipients who responded.
- Strong: 10-20% for outreach
- Weak: Below 5% may indicate relevance issues
Spam complaints
Recipients marking your email as spam.
- Acceptable: Below 0.1%
- Critical: Above 0.3% damages reputation
Viewing email stats
- Go to Reporting / Email
- View email statistics:
- Sent vs scheduled emails
- Open rate
- Daily limit
Campaign performance
For nurture campaigns:
- Go to Reporting / Nurture Campaigns
- View per-campaign metrics:
- Open rates by step
- Reply rates
- Progression through sequence
Warning signs
Your emails are going to spam
- Low open rates (below 10%)
- No replies despite good subject lines
- Test by sending to yourself
High bounce rates
- Invalid email addresses
- Outdated contact lists
- Typos in candidate emails
Sudden drop in engagement
- Reputation damage
- Blacklisting
- Content triggering spam filters
How to improve deliverability
Clean your email list
- Enable email validation (ZeroBounce integration)
- Remove invalid addresses before sending
- Re-verify old contacts
Improve content quality
- Personalize with variables
- Avoid spam trigger words
- Keep subject lines natural
- Include clear value proposition
Maintain sending reputation
- Warm up new accounts
- Stay within daily limits
- Send consistently (avoid bursts)
- Use dedicated outreach accounts
Technical setup
Ensure your domain has:
- SPF record configured
- DKIM authentication
- DMARC policy (recommended)
Your IT team or email provider can help with these.
Actions for common problems
Bounce rate too high
- Pause campaigns
- Validate all email addresses
- Remove bounced contacts
- Resume with clean list
Open rate too low
- Test subject lines (A/B test if possible)
- Check if emails reach inbox (send to yourself)
- Review sender name and email
- Improve email preview text
Getting blacklisted
- Stop sending immediately
- Check blacklist status at mxtoolbox.com
- Submit removal requests
- Wait for reputation recovery
- Resume with lower volume
Regular monitoring schedule
Daily:
- Check scheduled email queue
- Monitor for bounces
Weekly:
- Review open and reply rates
- Identify underperforming campaigns
Monthly:
- Audit email list quality
- Review overall deliverability trends
- Adjust strategies based on data
Updated on: 24/12/2025
Thank you!