Reputation is rebuilt by sending well, slowly
Your mail is authenticated, no blocklist shows an entry, and delivery's still poor. That combination points at reputation, which is the slowest of the four to fix and the one people try to skip.
Reputation attaches to both your domain and your sending IP, and it is built from what receivers observed you doing over weeks. There is no setting to change and no vendor who can reset it.
The order the work happens in
Stop the sends that are causing harm
Pause the campaigns to unengaged segments entirely. Carrying on while you rebuild is like digging while you fill the hole.
Cut to the people who opened something in ninety days
This is the group receivers will react well to. It's usually much smaller than teams expect, and that's the point rather than a problem.
Verify that small segment properly
During a rebuild, a single avoidable bounce costs more than usual. This is the cheapest part of the job because the segment is small.
Rebuild volume in steps, holding at each one
Increase gradually and stay at each level until the numbers are steady. Jump back to full volume in week two and you undo the weeks before it.
Set up feedback loops and watch the complaint rate
Complaints damage reputation faster than bounces do. The major providers will tell you about them if you register, and most senders never do.
What each result means here
The same four results and their flags, read against this job. A catch-all worth keeping in one situation is one to exclude in another.
| Result | What to do with it |
|---|---|
| Valid | Eligible for the rebuild segment, if the person has also engaged recently. |
| Invalid | Remove. A bounce during a rebuild costs more than the same bounce would in normal operation. |
| Catch-all | Not in the rebuild. Unconfirmable addresses have no place in a segment chosen to be safe. |
| Unknown | Not in the rebuild. Re-test later, once you have somewhere safe to test from. |
| Role flag | Not in the rebuild. Shared mailboxes produce complaints at a higher rate than individuals. |
| Disposable flag | Remove permanently and block the domain at the signup form. |
How you know it is finished
You are back at normal volume, the complaint rate sits below 0.1%, and a seed test shows mail arriving in the inbox rather than the junk folder at the providers your list actually uses.
What this does not fix
The rebuild segment is small by design, so this is one of the cheapest jobs on the site: a 5,000-address engaged segment fits inside a $25 purchase of 10,000 credits with most of it unused, and credits never expire.
Questions people ask
How long does sender reputation take to recover?
Several weeks of consistent sending to people who engage, and longer where a blocklist was involved. Providers weigh recent behavior heavily, which is what makes it recoverable at all.
Does warming up a new IP fix a reputation problem?
It moves your problem. A new IP starts at nothing rather than at a good score, and if your sending behavior has not changed you will damage the new one too.
Is domain or IP reputation more important?
Domain reputation follows you across providers and IPs, so it is the more durable of the two. Both matter, and a shared IP pool means other senders affect one of them.
Try it on the file in front of you
100 free checks a month, no card. Addresses we could not get an answer on come back labeled as unknown, and those are not billed.