Sending reputation is what decides whether your email reaches your donor's inbox. This article explains what reputation is, which factors you can watch inside Raise More, what to do about each one, and which signals live outside the product where you cannot see them directly.

Mailbox providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and the rest) decide where your email lands: the inbox, the spam folder, or nowhere at all. They make that decision partly from the content of each message, but mostly from a running score they keep on the domain and address you send from. That score is your sending reputation. A good reputation means your campaigns reach the inbox. A poor one means they get filtered to spam or blocked, even when the message itself is fine.

Reputation builds slowly and is damaged quickly. A single bad send to a stale list can undo months of good behavior. The factors below are the levers that move it.

Most of these factors are surfaced as columns on the email campaigns list, which shows one row per campaign. The columns include Delivered, Opened, Clicked, Provider bounces, Hard bounces, Content blocks, Temp bounces, Unknown bounces, Unsubscribed, and Clicked report spam. A Progress column shows how much of the campaign has sent. If a column is hidden, use the column controls on the table to turn it back on.

Opening an individual campaign shows the total emails sent and a breakdown of provider bounces by type (Hard, Content reputation, Temporary, Unknown). The full counts for opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and spam reports are read from the campaigns list columns described above.

Authentication proves to mailbox providers that the email genuinely came from you and was not forged. Raise More uses DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, set up through the domain verification flow when you add a sending identity. Until your domain is verified, your reputation cannot build properly and your mail is far more likely to be filtered.

Where you see it: the Verified Emails page. Each sending identity shows a status of Verified, In progress, or Action required.

What to do: complete domain verification before your first real campaign. If the status is In progress or Action required, finish the DNS steps using the Finish Verification button on that page. Do not send volume from a domain that is not yet Verified.

A bounce is mail that could not be delivered. Hard bounces, where the address does not exist, hurt the most, because repeatedly sending to dead addresses tells providers you are not maintaining your list. Raise More automatically suppresses addresses that hard bounce, and also suppresses addresses that soft bounce repeatedly, so you stop hitting them on future sends.

Where you see it: the Hard bounces, Provider bounces, Temp bounces, and Unknown bounces columns on the campaigns list, and the bounce breakdown on an individual campaign.

What to do: keep your list clean. Remove or stop importing addresses that bounce. Avoid sending to old lists you have not mailed in a long time, since many of those addresses will have gone dead.

A spam complaint is a recipient clicking "report spam" in their mailbox. Complaints are the strongest negative signal there is. Even a small percentage will damage your reputation quickly. Raise More automatically suppresses addresses that complain.

Where you see it: the Clicked report spam column on the campaigns list.

What to do: only send to people who expect to hear from you, make your unsubscribe link easy to find, and slow down on lists that draw complaints. Never re-mail an address that has complained.

Unsubscribes are healthy in moderation. They are people removing themselves cleanly instead of complaining, and Raise More suppresses them from future sends automatically. A sudden spike, though, signals that a campaign hit the wrong audience or that your sending is too frequent.

Where you see it: the Unsubscribed column on the campaigns list.

What to do: watch the trend. If unsubscribes jump on a particular campaign, reconsider that audience or your cadence.

Mailbox providers reward mail that recipients actually open and click. High engagement is a positive signal. Consistently low engagement suggests your audience does not want the mail, which drags reputation down over time. Open and click counts are a rough proxy rather than an exact measure, but the direction matters.

Where you see it: the Opened and Clicked columns on the campaigns list.

What to do: send to engaged segments rather than your entire list every time. Trim recipients who never open.

A steady sending pattern reads as legitimate. A sudden spike, especially from a brand-new domain or a cold list you have not mailed before, looks like spam behavior and can get throttled or blocked.

Where you see it: indirectly, through your campaign history and the sent counts on the campaigns list.

What to do: warm up gradually. Do not blast a large cold list on a freshly verified domain. Ramp volume up over several sends.

Some of what drives reputation lives at the mailbox provider and is never exposed to a sender. You cannot see your exact Gmail or Outlook reputation score, whether a specific message landed in inbox versus spam, or whether your domain or IP appears on a third-party blocklist. Raise More shows you the inputs you can control (authentication, bounces, complaints, unsubscribes, engagement, volume), but the final scoring happens on the provider's side. Manage the inputs well and the hidden score tends to follow.

These are general industry guidelines, not limits that Raise More enforces:

Where do I see these numbers?
The email campaigns list shows one row per campaign with columns for Delivered, Opened, Clicked, the bounce types, Unsubscribed, and Clicked report spam. Opening a campaign shows the total sent and a breakdown of provider bounces. Domain status appears on the Verified Emails page.

Does Raise More stop me from emailing bad addresses?
Yes. Addresses that hard bounce, repeatedly soft bounce, complain, or unsubscribe are automatically suppressed from future sends, so you do not keep mailing them.

My domain is not Verified yet. Can I still send?
You can, but you should not for any real campaign. Sending before the identity shows Verified hurts deliverability and reputation. Finish verification first.

A campaign had high spam complaints. What now?
Stop sending to that audience, review why it drew complaints (wrong list, unexpected sender, too frequent), and give your reputation time to recover before your next large send.