Bounce rates measure the percentage of your emails that couldn’t be delivered. Soft bounces happen for temporary issues – like a full mailbox – but hard bounces mean an address is invalid or doesn’t exist. High hard bounce rates can damage your sender reputation and signal poor list management, leading to lower deliverability and, ultimately, more emails caught in spam filters.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is a digital signature on your emails. This signature is linked to your domain and can be verified by the recipient’s mail server. This makes it possible to ensure that the email was actually sent by you and has not been altered along the way.
Sender reputation is like a trust score for your email domain. Mail providers track complaints, bounce rates, spam trap hits and engagement. If your sender reputation drops, your deliverability suffers, so more emails end up in spam or get blocked completely. Email services use these signals to judge whether your campaigns land in the inbox or the spam folder.
Spam traps are email addresses created by ISPs (Internet Service Providers) or ESPs (Email Service Providers) to catch questionable senders – usually found in purchased lists or harvested from the web. Hitting spam traps is a sign of bad sending practices and can put you on blocklists, preventing future emails from being delivered. Sticking to organically built lists and following email best practices keeps you clear of spam traps and protects your sender reputation.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a security measure implemented to protect against fake emails. It allows you to specify which systems or providers (e.g. GatewayAPI) that are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain.
Unsubscribe rates track how often recipients opt out of your emails. High unsubscribe rates tell mailbox providers you might be sending unwanted emails or using purchased lists. This can harm your sender reputation, signal spammy behavior and worsen deliverability.