Emails Going to Spam: What to Do Today
Seven checks in order and what to do with each finding
Mailvex · 4 September 2026 · 4 min read
If your email started landing in spam, act in a specific order: cut the sending volume first, then find the cause, and only then return to normal. Below are seven checks running from common causes to rare ones, and what to do with each finding.
First: confirm the problem is real
Before fixing anything, confirm the problem is real. One person mentioning they found your email in spam is not evidence: they may have their own filters, or once marked you as spam themselves.
Signs of a real problem: open rate halved within a week, clicks collapsed, several unrelated people reported the same thing. A single complaint is not a signal.
You can check it yourself: create inboxes at two or three different mail providers and send a test. If it lands in the inbox at one and in spam at another, the problem exists but is partial.
Seven checks in order
Work top to bottom: the earlier causes occur more often than all the others combined.
| What to check | How | If the problem is here |
|---|---|---|
| Domain signing | send to your own inbox and open the details | set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC — without them some mail never arrives |
| Unsubscribe link | open the email and find it by eye | put it in the footer visibly rather than in small print |
| Sender name | look at how it appears to the recipient | replace a noreply address with your company name |
| Complaint rate | your sending platform statistics | above 0.1% — pause sending and clean the list |
| Bounce rate | the same statistics | above 2% — the list is stale, remove dead addresses |
| Sudden volume growth | compare with last month | return to the previous volume, grow by no more than a third per week |
| Age of silent contacts | segment by last activity | exclude anyone who has not opened in six months |
The first three rows are the technical base. Without domain signing a significant share of your mail will not arrive at all, regardless of content. It is configured once and then works on its own.
What to do in the first day
If the problem is confirmed, the first day matters more than the following week.
- immediately reduce volume to the level you sent at when deliverability was fine
- exclude everyone who has not opened anything in six months
- check SPF, DKIM and DMARC — they often break during a hosting or provider change
- look at where new addresses came from over the past month
- send only to the most active part of the list for two or three weeks
The order matters here. Cutting volume comes first because every new send on damaged reputation makes things worse. Stopping is cheaper than continuing and hoping.
Why complaints matter most
Of all the metrics, one has the hardest threshold.
A complaint rate above 0.1% — one per thousand emails — starts affecting everything you send afterwards, including the transactional mail people are waiting for.
The mechanism is not obvious: people complain not because an email is bad but because they do not remember where it came from, or could not find the unsubscribe link. Complaints are more often caused by missing context than by content.
Hence a paradox worth accepting: a rise in unsubscribes is sometimes good. Someone who unsubscribes instead of complaining preserves your reputation. Hiding the unsubscribe link trades unsubscribes for complaints, which is a bad trade.
And a note on measurement: open rate is distorted by mail privacy protection, but it remains useful for judging deliverability. Watch the trend rather than the absolute number: a halving in a week means an inbox placement problem rather than weak subject lines.
Recovery takes weeks
Recovery takes weeks rather than days. Reputation accumulates slowly and is lost quickly — an asymmetry you have to plan around.
In practice: for two or three weeks send only to people who open regularly, then widen the circle gradually, watching complaints after each step. Returning to your previous volume within a week will not work.
How a builder handles this
Several causes in the table are removed while building the email rather than after sending. The unsubscribe link in the footer, a recognisable sender name, a line explaining where this newsletter came from — all of that belongs in the email from the start.
In Mailvex the unsubscribe link is added to the footer automatically and the validation panel flags its absence before export. Email weight is visible in the editor, which helps avoid the clipping threshold: a clipped email loses the footer with the unsubscribe link, and that directly increases complaints.
Build an email with a correct footer and unsubscribe.
Browse templatesFrequently asked questions
How do I know emails are really going to spam?
Create inboxes at two or three different providers and send a test. Also watch the trend: a halving of open rate within a week with unchanged subject lines points to a delivery problem rather than a content one.
What should I do first?
Cut the volume and write only to the most active part of your list for two or three weeks. In parallel, check SPF, DKIM and DMARC — they often break during a hosting or provider change.
How long does recovery take?
Weeks rather than days. Sender reputation accumulates slowly and is lost quickly. Widen the audience gradually, watching the complaint rate after each step.
