Why did my whole campaign get low deliverability?
If a whole email campaign landed in spam, bounced heavily, or got very few opens, the cause is usually not the individual message. It is usually something about how the mail is being sent that mailbox providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) do not trust. This article explains what deliverability means, the common causes, and the steps you can take in Raise More to fix it.
What "deliverability" means
Deliverability is whether your email reaches the inbox, not just whether it leaves Raise More. Raise More sends your campaign through our email provider and it goes out. The mailbox providers on the receiving end then decide where each message lands: inbox, promotions tab, spam, or dropped.
That decision is based on your sender reputation. The main signals are whether your sending domain is authenticated, whether recipients open and engage with your mail, whether they mark it as spam, and whether your addresses bounce. Low deliverability across a whole campaign usually means one or more of these signals is bad.
What Raise More shows you after a send
Open the campaign from the Email Campaigns page. The campaign view shows counts for emails sent, delivered, opened, clicked, and bounced, including a breakdown of bounce types (hard bounces, temporary bounces, and content/reputation bounces). Use these numbers to tell which problem you have. A high bounce count points to list quality. Low opens with normal delivery points to reputation or content.
Raise More does not provide a separate inbox-placement or spam-folder dashboard. No platform can see which folder a message landed in at Gmail or Outlook. Use the open and bounce counts as your signal.
Common causes
Unauthenticated or unverified sending domain
This is the most common cause. If your domain is not set up with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC (the DNS records that prove the mail really came from you), mailbox providers treat it as suspicious. Raise More walks you through verifying your domain on the Email Identities page using a guided DNS setup. Until that domain shows as verified, deliverability will be poor.
DKIM, SPF, and DMARC are standard email authentication records. You add them once, at your domain's DNS provider, following the values Raise More gives you.
Sending from a free address
Sending a campaign from a gmail.com, yahoo.com, or similar free address is a strong spam signal. Those providers publish strict DMARC policies that block bulk mail sent on their behalf. Send from your own campaign domain instead, and verify it first.
Poor list hygiene
Old, scraped, or purchased lists are full of dead addresses and spam traps. They produce high bounce and complaint rates, which damages your reputation quickly and drags down delivery for the whole send, including to your good addresses.
High spam-complaint rate
When recipients hit "report spam," mailbox providers count it. A complaint rate above roughly 0.1% (one in a thousand) starts to hurt. Sending to people who never opted in, or sending too often, drives complaints up.
Spammy content or subject lines
ALL CAPS subjects, excessive exclamation points, misleading "RE:" or "FWD:" prefixes, urgent money language, and image-only emails with little text all trip spam filters.
No warmup on a new domain
A brand-new sending domain has no reputation. Sending tens of thousands of messages on day one looks like spam. Reputation has to be built up gradually.
A large blast to a cold list
Sending to people who have not heard from you in months produces low engagement and high complaints, which tells mailbox providers your mail is unwanted.
Broken or suspicious links
Dead links, link shorteners, or links to domains with bad reputations can flag the whole message.
How Raise More handles bad addresses
Raise More keeps you from re-mailing addresses that have already gone bad. Before a campaign sends, it checks each recipient against your organization's removed addresses and skips anyone marked as:
Unsubscribed
Hard bounced
Repeated soft bounce
Spam complaint
Those contacts are intentionally left out of the send. This protects your reputation and keeps you compliant. Do not try to work around it. Re-mailing a suppressed address is a CAN-SPAM violation.
Steps to fix and prevent it
Verify your sending domain first. On the Email Identities page, complete the domain verification flow so DKIM, SPF, and DMARC are all in place. Nothing else matters until this is done. Always send from your own verified domain, never a free address.
Clean your list. Remove addresses that have bounced or complained. Raise More already skips unsubscribed, hard-bounced, repeatedly soft-bounced, and spam-complaint addresses on every send, so you do not need to remove those by hand, but tightening the list further before a big send still helps.
Warm up a new domain. Start with small sends to your most engaged contacts and increase volume gradually over a couple of weeks before any full blast.
Segment to engaged contacts. Build a list of people who opened or clicked recently and send to them rather than your whole database. High engagement builds reputation; sending to cold contacts erodes it.
Improve content. Use a clear, honest subject line. Keep a reasonable text-to-image ratio. Include a working unsubscribe link and a physical mailing address. Check that every link works and points to a reputable destination.
Watch bounce and complaint counts. After each send, check the bounce count on the campaign view. If it spikes, pause and investigate before your next campaign instead of compounding the damage.
When to contact support
Reach out to our team if:
Your domain shows as verified but deliverability is still poor.
You see a sudden, unexplained drop after a long stretch of healthy sending.
Bounce or complaint counts spiked and you cannot identify why.
You are not sure how to add your DNS records for domain verification.
Share the affected campaign and a rough timeframe so we can investigate quickly.
FAQ
Does Raise More guarantee inbox placement?
No platform can. Mailbox providers make the final call. Raise More gives you authenticated sending and automatic skipping of known-bad addresses. The rest comes down to list quality, content, and engagement.
I verified my domain but mail still goes to spam. Why?
Verification fixes authentication, not reputation. If your list is cold or your domain is new, you still need warmup and good list hygiene to recover.
One campaign tanked. Did I ruin my domain forever?
No. Reputation recovers. Pause large sends, clean your list, and resume with small, engaged segments to rebuild trust over the following weeks.
Why are some addresses being skipped on my sends?
Raise More skips contacts who unsubscribed, hard-bounced, repeatedly soft-bounced, or reported spam. This protects your reputation and keeps you compliant. Those contacts are excluded on purpose.