List hygiene, consent & avoiding bounces

Your list quality is the single biggest factor you control. Mailbox providers watch bounces, complaints, and engagement closely — a clean, consented list keeps your reputation healthy; a dirty one damages it fast.

Consent comes first

Only send to people who explicitly opted in to hear from you. Purchased, scraped, or “we have their email from somewhere” lists are the fastest route to spam folders and complaints — and they put your domain’s reputation at risk.

This is a shared responsibility: MailMonk handles authentication, infrastructure, and compliance plumbing; you own consent, list quality, and content.

Avoid bounces

A bounce is an email that couldn’t be delivered (the address doesn’t exist, the mailbox is full, etc.). High bounce rates tell providers your list is stale and hurt placement for everyone on it.

• Remove addresses that hard-bounce — don’t keep retrying them.
• Don’t mail addresses you haven’t contacted in a long time without re-confirming.
• Watch for typos in collected addresses (gmial.com, gmai.com, etc.).

Avoid complaints

A complaint is when a recipient hits “Report spam.” Complaints are the most damaging signal of all. Reduce them by:

• Mailing only people who opted in and remember you.
• Setting clear expectations at signup (what you’ll send, how often).
• Making unsubscribe easy — MailMonk includes a one-click unsubscribe automatically, which is both required by Gmail/Yahoo bulk-sender rules and far better for you than a spam complaint.

Prune unengaged contacts

Contacts who never open or click drag down your engagement metrics. Periodically:

• Segment out people who haven’t engaged in many months.
• Try a re-engagement campaign, then suppress those who still don’t respond.
• Prioritise your most engaged contacts, especially while warming up a new domain. See Why new sending domains warm up.