Blocked Emails & Spam Placement

Mailbox providers such as Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo decide two things for every email: whether to accept it, and where to put it. This guide covers both ways that can go wrong:

• Blocked: the provider refused the email. It tells us why, and we show you the reason.
• Spam placement: the provider accepted the email, so it shows as Delivered, but filed it in spam.

Both come from how the provider judges your mail, so both are fixed by changing what you send and who you send it to. Neither clears by waiting.

Start Here

Find What the Provider Said

Start with the provider’s own words. They tell you which problem you have.

1. Open Metrics. Under Sender Quality, click the filter icon on the Blocked card.
2. Set Break down by to Mailbox provider. One provider refusing you points to how that provider sees your mail. Every provider refusing you at once usually points to your DNS records.
3. Open one blocked email from Sent emails. The page shows the reason in one sentence, and the provider’s reply under Diagnostic code.

The same data is available outside the dashboard: outcome and reason on Get Email Send and sequenzy email-sends get <emailSendId>, by=mailbox_provider&outcome=blocked on Get Metrics Breakdown, sequenzy stats --by mailbox_provider --outcome blocked in the CLI, and the outcome argument of the MCP get_stats_breakdown tool.

What the Reason Means

An email that shows Delayed is still being retried and needs nothing from you. A full mailbox or an address that doesn’t exist is a bounce, not a block. Those are about the address, and Metrics explains how they’re handled.

Why Waiting or Sending Slower Doesn’t Help

A provider builds its view of you from how its users react: opening, clicking, replying and moving your email out of spam count for you. Deleting unread, ignoring and reporting spam count against you. That explains three things that often surprise people:

• A pause changes nothing. While you send nothing, the provider learns nothing new. When you resume with the same email to the same kind of audience, you get the same answer.
• A slower ramp only paces the problem. A daily schedule controls how many emails go out. It can’t make people want an email they ignore. Growing 10% a day to recipients who never engage ends in the same block, a little later.
• A new domain or subdomain is not a reset. It starts with no history, so the same email to the same audience earns the same result within days. Providers also recognise your content and links, and treat a switch right after a block as an attempt to get around it.

What changes the provider’s view is new evidence that people want your mail. The rest of this guide is about producing that evidence.

Recover from a Spam Block

Work through these in order.

1. Stop sending the refused email to that provider. Keep your other providers and your transactional email going. To leave a provider out, add an Email Provider condition to your segment, for example Email Provider is not Google, which covers Gmail and Google Workspace (see Filtering Subscribers).
2. Confirm your DNS records still verify. Open Settings → Domain. A record removed during a site move or DNS cleanup is the most common sudden cause.
3. Look at who you were mailing. Check where the contacts came from, whether they asked to hear from you, and how long ago. Remove purchased, scraped and partner-supplied contacts, and anyone who hasn’t engaged in months.
4. Send only to people who expect your email. That means two groups: contacts who clicked or opened in the last 30 days (an engagement filter such as emailClicked is 30d), and new contacts at the moment they sign up, through a sequence.
5. Change the email. Providers recognise an email they’ve already judged. Write a new subject, address the person by name, say why they’re getting it, and keep links on your own domain by setting up your tracking domain.
6. Check the Blocked card for that provider every day. When several sends in a row go through cleanly, widen to contacts engaged in the last 60 days, then 90. Don’t add contacts who have never engaged.

Recovery follows the provider’s schedule and takes weeks of sending wanted email, not days. We can’t lift a provider’s block for you. The provider reverses it when the mail it sees from you changes.

When Every Recipient Is New

Some businesses send one email to each contact and never write again: a quote reminder, a lead follow-up, a one-time offer. There is no engaged group to fall back on, so the provider only ever sees first contact, and steps 4 and 6 above can’t apply as written. Do this instead:

• Send at the moment of the request. Use a sequence triggered when the contact is added, not a daily batch. Someone who asked a minute ago opens and clicks. The same person a day later often doesn’t remember asking.
• Make the email about their request. Use their name and what they asked for. “Hi friend, your quote is waiting” reads like bulk mail to a filter and to a person.
• Send contacts over as they arrive. If your system passes contacts to Sequenzy once a day or once a week, the email is late before it starts.
• Confirm the address when refusals continue. Turn on double opt-in so only people who click to confirm get the email.
• Be honest about the source. Contacts from lead forms, comparison sites, affiliates and partners often don’t know your brand. If the provider keeps refusing email sent at request time, it is telling you these people don’t expect to hear from you.

Delivered but Not in the Inbox

Delivered means the provider accepted the email. It doesn’t say which folder the email went to, and providers don’t share that with any sender.

Confirm It’s Real

A drop in opens alone proves little, because privacy features and image blocking distort opens.

• Check clicks too. If clicks, replies and sales held steady, you’re looking at a tracking change, not a placement problem.
• Break down by mailbox provider on the Metrics page. A drop at one provider points to that provider’s view of you. A drop everywhere points to DNS or a shared cause.
• Send the real email to your own mailbox at the affected provider, and repeat it over two or three sends. A stripped-down test tells you nothing, because filtering depends on the real content and links.
• Ask a recipient you know to check spam, Promotions and, at a company address, their IT quarantine. Marking the email “Not spam” helps.

Check the Usual Causes

Most cases are one of the first three.

1. DNS records changed. Re-verify in Settings → Domain.
2. A large send to a new or long-quiet list. Sending a freshly imported list in one go, or mailing people you haven’t contacted in months, is a common cause.
3. Complaints. Gmail doesn’t report individual spam complaints to senders. Set up Google Postmaster Tools for your domain to see your spam rate there. Keep it under 0.1%.
4. A shared sending domain. If you send from the free sequenzymail.com domain, you share its reputation. Verify your own domain.
5. Links. Use your own tracking domain, avoid URL shorteners, and don’t link to third-party sites with a poor name.
6. Content. Less common than people assume. Make the subject match the content and keep a recognisable sender name.

Then follow Recover from a spam block. The steps are the same.

Before Your First Send

A new domain, or an existing domain sending to a new list, has no record with providers. The first impressions set it.

• Start with sequences. Welcome and onboarding emails go to people who just acted, so they earn the best reactions.
• Send your first campaign to recently engaged contacts. After a migration, use the engagement data from your old provider (see Migrating).
• Never send a whole imported list on day one. Use Spread Over Time and add older contacts in later sends.
• Grow only while the numbers hold. If clicks stay steady and the Blocked and temporary-bounce cards stay low, send to more people next time. If they move, stop growing and find out why.

There is no schedule that works for every sender. Pace limits how fast things can go wrong. Who you send to decides whether they go wrong at all.

Before You Contact Support

If you’ve worked through this guide and still need us, include the following so one message is enough:

• Your company ID and sending domain
• The campaign or sequence, and which mailbox provider is affected
• The provider’s reply from one blocked email
• When it started, and what changed just before: a new list, an import, new content or a DNS change
• Where the affected contacts came from and how they signed up
• For Gmail, a screenshot of your Postmaster Tools spam rate

FAQ

Can you give me a warm-up schedule?

A schedule sets how many emails go out each day. It helps when your mail is wanted and you only need to avoid a sudden jump. It doesn’t help when a provider is refusing your mail as unsolicited, because the problem is who receives the email, not how many do. Start with Before your first send.

Should I move to a new domain or subdomain?

Not to escape a block. A subdomain is useful for keeping different kinds of email apart, for example receipts and newsletters. It doesn’t give the same email a second chance.

Will a dedicated IP fix it?

No. A dedicated IP changes which address your mail leaves from. It doesn’t change how recipients react to the email, and that is what the provider is judging.

My setup shows as compliant. Why am I still blocked?

Compliance checks cover your technical setup: SPF, DKIM, DMARC and unsubscribe headers. A provider can accept that your setup is correct and still decide its users don’t want the email.

Other providers accept my email. Why only Gmail?

Each provider judges you separately, from its own users. Being accepted at one says nothing about another, and recovering at one doesn’t carry over.

Related