Deliverability Triage Before Scale-Up (QA)
A checklist with 7 steps: Pull bounce and complaint rates per sending domain for the trailing 14 days.
By InnovaAI ResearchPublished
What are the steps?
Deliverability Triage Before Scale-Up (QA)
- 01
Pull bounce and complaint rates per sending domain for the trailing 14 days
Segment by domain rather than by campaign, because a single burned domain inside a healthy account average hides the problem. Anything above 2% hard bounce or 0.1% complaint rate gets quarantined before new volume is added.
- 02
Verify SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment on every domain in the rotation
Misalignment is the most common cause of placement drops that look like content problems. Confirm the DMARC policy is at minimum p=none with reporting enabled so aggregate reports reveal unauthorized senders.
- 03
Check inbox placement on a seed list across Gmail, Outlook, and one regional provider
A 90%+ inbox rate on seeds is the floor for scaling. If the client sells into Europe, add a local provider to the seed set; placement varies by region and by receiving infrastructure.
- 04
Confirm list provenance for every segment queued in the next send window
Ask for the acquisition source, the date of capture, and whether consent was collected under the jurisdiction that applies to each recipient. Purchased or scraped lists fail this check and should be removed from the sequence entirely.
- 05
Review the last 50 sent messages for spam-trigger patterns and link hygiene
Look for shortened URLs, attachment-heavy first touches, and subject lines that promise outcomes. Rewrite flagged templates before the next batch rather than after a complaint arrives.
- 06
Reconcile sending volume against mailbox age and warmup history
New mailboxes should ramp in increments of roughly 20 to 50 sends per day. A mailbox under 30 days old carrying 200 sends a day is the profile that produces sudden domain burns.
- 07
Log the triage result and the remediation owner in the client's delivery record
Every quarantine, rewrite, or list removal needs a named owner and a review date. This record becomes the evidence base if the client later asks why meeting volume dipped in a given week.