When your send list is full of valid or accept-all email addresses, and bounce rates are below 3%, but you’re still landing in spam folders, what do you do?
Run this play to resolve your deliverability issues, step by step.
Why this matters
Spam placement is hard to diagnose because nothing tells you it happened.
A bounce sends you a message, but an email finding its way into junk doesn’t.
It’s critical to identify the issues, because placement failures feed themselves.
Every email filtered to spam lowers your sender reputation, which sends more of the next campaign to spam.
Here’s how to make sense of your email deliverability headaches in Hunter.
Your plan
- What you'll achieve: Identify a specific cause for your placement drop, a corrected sending setup, and a checklist to help prevent a repeat occurrence.
- Use Hunter tools to diagnose and overcome:
- Free tools: Email Deliverability Checker, SPF Record Generator, DMARC Record Generator, and Email Warm-up Calculator. All four run in your browser with no account and no limits.
- Paid features: Global Health and the Deliverability Guard need a paid All-in-one Outreach plan. Inbox Protection is a further add-on, billed monthly per email account. Steps 2, 3, and 5 work without either.
- Learn more about deliverability: With our free email deliverability 101 guide.
- Time to complete: About 20 minutes for the checks, plus 30 days if you warm an account back up
- When to run this play: A bounce rate under 3%.
- When to run another play: A bounce rate above 3%, run this playbook. Remove Invalid and Disposable addresses and treat Unknown with the same caution. Accept-All can stay at a Confidence Score of 85% or higher, in a separate send list.
Step 1: Confirm if there’s a placement issue
Use the guide below to know where you to place your next step:
- Your open rate fell and nothing changed in your subject line or list: This is a deliverability issue – move forward with this play.
- Opens unchanged by reply rates dropped: Your emails are reaching the inbox, which means that your challenge lies in the email body or offer used. You need to try different offers.
- Your bounce rate went above 3%: Run the bounce rate playbook instead.
Step 2: Check your domain records
Authentication problems with the domain that your email address is associated with are the quickest (and cheapest) fix to try first.
Visit Run your sending domain through the free Email Deliverability Checker.
This checker is free, and will enable you to scan critical parts of your domain - SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX - plus blacklist status.
No Hunter account is needed. If you pass every check here, move to Step 4.
If you see errors, turn your attention to addressing each in order, as we will below.
Step 3: Rebuild the failing records
With Hunter, you can generate free records for both your SPF and DMARC.
Each gives you a plain-English explanation of what these are, why you need to update them, and walk through what to do with the newly-generated copy-ready TXT records.
SPF record missing or broken
The SPF Record Generator lets you tick the services you send from and adds the right include for each.
It also warns you before you cross the 10-lookup limit that makes SPF fail.
DMARC record missing
The DMARC Record Generator builds your policy and reporting tags.
Start on monitor-only so nothing gets blocked while you read the reports, then move to quarantine and reject.
Publish the record at your DNS provider.
Once it propagates, re-run the Deliverability Checker to confirm it's live.
Step 4: Isolate continually failing accounts
If your records pass your check following step 3, and you're still in spam, the problem is account-level.
If you are on a paid Hunter plan, you can connect your email accounts to Hunter and use the Email Accounts Center to re-diagnose.
If you have yet to connect your email accounts, follow this guide.
With your accounts connected, open the Email Accounts Center and compare health scores across your connected accounts.
If one account dropped, the problem is contained to that sender.
If every account dropped together, look at the domain they share, or at your copy and targeting.
Step 5: Rebuild your reputation
Fixing your records can stop the damage, but it doesn’t reverse it. You need to rebuild your reputation.
With Hunter, you can add Inbox Protection to your account.
This warms the account for you, sending to a private network of real inboxes and generating real replies over 30 days before shifting into ongoing maintenance.
Learn more about Inbox Protection.
To do it free, the Email Warm-Up Calculator builds a day-by-day ramp plan for you based on your provider, current volume, and target.
Export it to CSV or your calendar and follow the plan by manually sending emails.
Step 6: Follow this pre-send checklist
With all these steps followed, work through this checklist before your next sequence:
- Test: Re-run the Deliverability Checker before a large campaign, then watch for sudden drift in opens, bounces, or replies afterward.
- Ask a question, not for whitelisting: Asking a lead to drag you into their Primary tab rarely works. Ask one specific question instead, because a reply is the strongest positive signal a provider can see.
- Format: Use plain text for your first email in a sequence. HTML emails bounce 652% more, and include your tracking pixel, branded signature, and any link.
- Volume: Keep each account under 50 sends a day. Add more accounts to a sequence rather than raise limits.
- Warm-up: Any account that's new, or unused for 30 days, needs warming before it carries real volume.
- Authentication: Check that your SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX all pass the Deliverability Checker.
What this looks like when it's working
Your records pass, your Global Health score climbs as the Deliverability Guard panel empties, and open rates return to their old baseline.
If everything passes and placement still doesn't recover, what's left is your content or your targeting, not your email sending infrastructure.
Put all of this into action today with Hunter's Outreach Planner:
Send cold emails with Hunter