What is good Email Health?
No one likes spam. To have the privilege of sending a large number of emails to an audience, it is your responsibility to only send emails to people who want to receive them. People who have opted-in or not unsubscribed. Email hygiene is vital to maintaining a healthy database.
Good Email Health means your sending practices, technical infrastructure, and list quality align perfectly so that mailbox providers (like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) trust you. It directly dictates your deliverability rate—meaning your emails land in the primary inbox instead of the spam folder or getting blocked completely. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Think of email health like a financial credit score: it takes consistent good behavior to build, but a few reckless campaign sends can instantly crash it. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
1. The Core Benchmark Metrics
To maintain excellent email health, your campaign analytics should consistently hit or beat these industry standard thresholds: [1, 2, 3, 4]
• Bounce Rate: Under 2%Anything higher signals to internet service providers (ISPs) that you are using an outdated, scraped, or unverified contact list. [1, 2]
• Spam Complaint Rate: Under 0.1%This means no more than 1 out of every 1,000 recipients flags your email as spam. Google and Yahoo strictly enforce a maximum absolute ceiling of 0.3%, above which your domain will be heavily throttled or blacklisted. [1, 2, 3]
• Open Rate: 20% to 35%+While privacy features (like Apple Mail Privacy Protection) can warp these numbers, a steady open rate proves to ISPs that your recipients actually want and look forward to your content. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Unsubscribe Rate: Under 0.5%Losing a few subscribers per send is normal list decay, but spikes indicate your content formatting or frequency is missing the mark. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
2. Technical Infrastructure (The Foundation)
You cannot have healthy email delivery without verifying who you are. ISPs require complete alignment on three core domain authentication records: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Specifies exactly which servers/IPs (like GoHighLevel or Mailgun) are authorized to send mail on behalf of your domain. When we set up your account we create DNS records to let email receiver accounts know that your email is wanted and not spam. [1, 2, 3]
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to your emails, proving the message wasn't intercepted or altered in transit. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Tells mailbox providers exactly what to do (e.g., block it or send to spam) if an email fails SPF or DKIM checks. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Why does an email “Bounce”
It can be an error, a typo, an email that’s no longer valid or a temporary sending issue. See Soft and Hard Bounce.
The difference between a ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ bounce
Hard Bounce: Permanent Failure
A hard bounce occurs when the receiving server completely rejects the email with no option for a retry.
• Why it happens: The email address does not exist, contains a bad typo (like
@gmial.com), the domain name is invalid, or the recipient has permanently closed the account.
• Action: You must remove hard bounces immediately. Continuing to send to hard-bounced addresses will ruin your sender reputation, causing Gmail and Yahoo to send your future emails straight to spam, or resulting in your ability to send email by temporarily suspending your email account if your overall bounce rate exceeds 5%.
Soft Bounce: Temporary Issue
A soft bounce means the email address is valid and the server recognized it, but the message could not be delivered at that exact moment.
• Why it happens: The recipient's inbox is completely full, their email server is temporarily down or offline, or your email message file size is too large.
• Action: In combination with your the integrated SMTP provider (Mailgun) which we use for sending your mail, we will automatically attempt to re-deliver the email over a 24 to 72-hour window. If the problem clears up, the status changes to "Delivered". However, if an address soft bounces consistently across 3 or more separate campaigns, treat it as a hard bounce and apply DND What to do?
Remove Hard Bounce emails from the system once and for all!
Turn on "Auto-Suppress"
(So you never have to do this again)
We have a built-in toggle that handles this automatically behind the scenes to safeguard your sender score.
1. Go to Settings (bottom left corner of your account).
2. Click on Business Profile.
3. Scroll down to the General settings section.
4. Locate and toggle ON the setting:
"Mark Email as Invalid due to Hard Bounce".
5. Click Save.
Note: Once this is enabled, the system instantly blocks future outbound emails to any address that registers a hard bounce, preventing automatic suspension penalties
Create a workflow to automatically remove Hard Bounced emails from you database
Here are the step-by-step guides for both exporting your bounced contacts and creating an automated workflow to manage them.
1. Go to Contacts ➔ Smart Lists.
2. Click More Filters, search for Email Status, and set it to Bounced.
3. Check the Select All box at the top left of the contact grid.
4. Click Select all [number] records if your list spans multiple pages.
5. Click the Export Contacts icon (the tray with an upward arrow) at the top of the table.
6. Confirm the export. Download the file from your notifications or email once processed.
To automatically tag bounced contacts and protect your sender reputation, set up this simple automation:
1. Navigate to Automation ➔ Workflows and click Create Workflow (choose Start from scratch).
2. Click Add New Trigger and select Email Events.
3. In the trigger filters, select Event ➔ Is ➔ Bounced. Save the trigger.
4. Click the (+) icon below the trigger to add an action.
5. Choose Add Contact Tag and create a tag like
Email Bounced.
6. Click the (+) icon again to add another action.
7. Choose Set Contact DND (Do Not Disturb).
8. Set it to Enable DND for Email. This stops future emails without deleting the contact.
9. Toggle the workflow status from Draft to Publish and click Save in the top right corner. If you have questions regarding what to do or need help please text us at 647-560-1026.
