If you run outbound at any real scale in 2026, deliverability is no longer a “marketing ops hygiene” problem. It is a governance problem. The same way RevOps governs pipeline definitions and data quality, you need governance over complaints, bounces, inbox placement, suppression, and compliance behaviors across every sending domain and tool.
TL;DR (copy/paste): Build an email deliverability dashboard that RevOps reviews weekly with a single scorecard. Track (1) complaint rate, (2) hard bounce rate, (3) inbox placement proxy signals, (4) unsubscribe and suppression health, and (5) domain level reputation indicators. Assign metric owners, set thresholds, and attach a runbook to every red metric. Use automation guardrails (throttling, suppression, list segmentation) so the system prevents incidents, not just reports them.
What an Email Deliverability Governance Dashboard is (and why RevOps owns it)
An email deliverability governance dashboard is a weekly control system that answers three questions:
- Are we compliant with mailbox provider expectations and our own policies?
- Are recipients signaling “wanted mail” through low complaints and healthy engagement?
- Do we have operational controls to stop damage quickly when metrics spike?
This is not a DNS checklist. Authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) is table stakes, but governance is what keeps you out of the penalty box when:
- a new list gets uploaded without validation,
- a campaign is cloned with broken personalization,
- a rep imports scraped contacts,
- a vendor starts sending from your domain,
- a segmentation mistake floods uninterested segments.
Google explicitly recommends keeping user reported spam below 0.1% and preventing it from ever reaching 0.3% or higher, with daily calculations reflected in Postmaster Tools. That is a governance metric because it depends on list policy, messaging policy, throttling, and suppression logic, not just mail server settings. (Google Workspace Admin Help)
The governance model: two layers of controls
Layer 1: Policy (what is allowed)
Define the rules that keep your sending program “safe by default”:
- List acquisition policy: what sources are allowed, what proof of consent is required, what enrichment sources are permitted.
- Suppression policy: global suppression across tools (CRM, sequencer, marketing automation).
- Frequency policy: max touches per person per week, per domain per day, per mailbox per hour.
- Content policy: prohibited patterns (misleading subject lines, link shorteners, attachment types, “RE:” spoofing).
- Incident policy: who can pause sending, who can approve re ramp, who owns communications.
If you want a framework for evaluating whether your CRM actually supports this kind of governance, see: CRM Evaluation Rubric for 2026: Data Governance, Audit Trails, and Agent Guardrails (Not Just ‘AI Features’)
Layer 2: Instrumentation (what is happening)
Your dashboard should make policy measurable. RevOps needs:
- a weekly scorecard (executive view),
- drill downs (domain, mailbox, campaign, list),
- an incident runbook attached to each metric.
The weekly deliverability scorecard template (copyable)
Use this as the top tab in your email deliverability dashboard. It is built for a 20 to 30 minute RevOps review.
Weekly Deliverability Governance Scorecard (template)
Reporting window: Monday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 (sender timezone)
Scope: all outbound and lifecycle email from company owned domains
| Metric | Definition | Target (Green) | Watch (Yellow) | Action (Red) | Owner | Required data source | First remediation step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| User reported spam / complaints | Spam complaints divided by delivered or inboxed mail, by mailbox provider | < 0.10% | 0.10% to 0.29% | ≥ 0.30% | Lifecycle Marketing + RevOps | Google Postmaster Tools, ESP FBLs where available | Pause highest volume campaigns, tighten segmentation |
| Hard bounce rate | Permanent failures (5.x.x). Includes invalid mailbox (5.1.1) and policy rejects | < 1.0% | 1.0% to 1.9% | ≥ 2.0% | RevOps | ESP logs + SMTP enhanced codes | Freeze new list uploads, run validation, expand suppression |
| “Policy” bounce rate | Permanent failures tied to policy/security (commonly 5.7.x) | < 0.3% | 0.3% to 0.7% | > 0.7% | Deliverability owner | ESP logs (categorize 5.7.x) | Reduce volume, remove risky content patterns, confirm auth alignment |
| Unsubscribe rate | Unsubscribes divided by delivered | < 0.3% | 0.3% to 0.7% | > 0.7% | Marketing Ops | ESP | Review message market fit and frequency caps |
| Inbox placement rate (seed) or proxy | Seed test IPR or provider reputation trend | Stable or improving | Down 3 to 5 pts | Down > 5 pts | Deliverability owner | Seed tests, Postmaster reputation, ESP analytics | Pause new sends to affected domain/provider, re ramp |
| Domain reputation trend (Gmail) | Postmaster domain reputation, plus spam rate trend | High/Medium and stable | Drops 1 level | Low or rapidly declining | Deliverability owner | Google Postmaster Tools | Investigate complaint and bounce drivers immediately |
| Suppression health | % of sends blocked by suppression logic, and reason codes | Stable and explainable | Sudden change | Sudden drop to near 0% | RevOps | CRM + sequencer suppression logs | Audit suppression rules, confirm global suppression sync |
| New leads quality | % of new leads enriched + validated prior to first send | > 95% | 90% to 95% | < 90% | RevOps | CRM enrichment + validation workflow | Enforce waterfall enrichment, block send until confidence threshold met |
Why these thresholds: Google’s spam rate guidance for bulk senders explicitly anchors governance at < 0.1% and “never hit 0.3%.” (Google Workspace Admin Help) Hard bounce thresholds vary by program, but above ~2% is usually a sign of list quality failure. A hard bounce is typically indicated by SMTP 5.x.x permanent failure codes, standardized under enhanced status codes (RFC 3463). (RFC 3463)
If you need a strong enrichment and validation strategy to reduce bounces, use: Waterfall Enrichment in 2026: How Multi-Source Data Cuts Bounces and Increases Reply Rates
Dashboard layout: tabs and drill downs (RevOps friendly)
Your email deliverability dashboard should have four operational tabs plus the scorecard.
Tab 1: Executive scorecard (weekly)
Include:
- traffic light status per sending domain
- top 3 risks this week
- “pause recommendations” (if any)
- owner follow ups with dates
Tab 2: Domains (governance view)
Purpose: isolate issues to a domain, not the whole program.
Columns to include:
- Domain (example:
trycompany.com,getcompany.com) - Provider mix (Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, others)
- Complaint rate by provider
- Hard bounces by enhanced code family (5.1.x, 5.7.x)
- Postmaster reputation level and trend (if available)
- Volume sent, delivered, and throttled
Operational rules:
- One domain should not exceed your defined share of weekly send volume without approval.
- If one domain turns red, you shift volume to healthier domains only if policy allows and the audience match is clean.
Tab 3: Mailboxes and sending identities (operator view)
Purpose: find the individual mailbox or IP pool causing damage.
Include:
- mailbox address
- sends/day, sends/hour
- complaint count and rate
- bounce rate
- reply rate (if outbound)
- percent of emails blocked by throttling
- campaign membership count
This is where “rep behavior” becomes measurable governance.
Tab 4: Campaigns (change management view)
Purpose: identify which change introduced the issue.
Include:
- campaign name + launch date
- segment definition snapshot (ICP, filters)
- copy version (hash or version number)
- AI personalization settings used
- complaint rate, hard bounce rate, unsub rate
- engagement signals (replies, positive replies, CTR if applicable)
Tip: if you do frequent experiments, keep a small “release notes” box for each campaign launch.
Tab 5: Lists and acquisition sources (compliance view)
Purpose: stop bad data at the source.
Include:
- list name
- source (webinar, inbound demo, enrichment provider, scraped, partner)
- proof of consent field completeness (if required)
- validation coverage percentage
- hard bounce rate
- complaints per 1,000 delivered
- first send date and campaign association
If your list governance is weak, your deliverability governance will fail.
Required metrics definitions (so your dashboard is unambiguous)
Use these definitions in the dashboard itself so every stakeholder interprets the numbers the same way.
Complaints (user reported spam)
- Definition: recipients marking your message as spam.
- Why it matters: mailbox providers treat it as a direct “wanted mail” signal.
- Google recommends staying below 0.1% and preventing rates from ever reaching 0.3% or higher, with daily calculations. (Google Workspace Admin Help)
Hard bounces (permanent failures)
- Definition: SMTP failures that are not resolved by retrying, typically 5.x.x.
- How to categorize: use enhanced status codes (RFC 3463) to bucket failures into address issues (5.1.x), policy/security (5.7.x), etc. (RFC 3463)
- Governance meaning: hard bounce spikes usually mean list quality, enrichment/validation gaps, or targeting drift.
Inbox placement (IPR) vs delivered
- Delivered means accepted by receiving server.
- Inbox placement means it lands in inbox, not spam/promotions (depending on measurement method).
- Benchmark research shows global inbox placement is not perfect even for legitimate programs. Validity reported a global inbox placement rate of 83.5% in 2024 and noted rising spam placement through 2024. (Validity)
Governance takeaway: “Delivered” is not the goal. Inbox placement and recipient feedback are.
Weekly meeting agenda (30 minutes, governance focused)
Run this like a pipeline review. Same cadence, same discipline.
0) Pre work (async)
- RevOps posts the scorecard with red/yellow highlights.
- Owners add notes: suspected cause, what changed, what actions are planned.
1) 5 minutes: Executive scan
- What is red, what is trending worse, what changed since last week?
- Any domains/providers at risk?
2) 10 minutes: Deep dive on one risk
Pick the highest risk metric (usually complaints or bounces) and answer:
- Which domain?
- Which provider?
- Which campaigns?
- Which list source?
- Which sending identities?
3) 10 minutes: Decide controls
Choose one or more:
- Pause a campaign
- Reduce send volume (throttling)
- Tighten segmentation (exclude low intent cohorts)
- Expand suppression rules
- Require enrichment + validation before first send
- Copy changes (offer, positioning, personalization constraints)
4) 5 minutes: Log decisions like change management
- What was changed
- Who approved
- When it goes live
- When to reevaluate
If you want a KPI operating system beyond open rates, align this meeting to your outbound metrics routine: 2026 Outbound KPI Stack: The Metrics That Matter After Opens (and the Weekly Ops Routine to Track Them)
Incident runbook (copyable): complaints spike, bounces rise, placement drops
This is the part most teams do informally, then repeat mistakes. Put it in the dashboard as a tab called “Runbooks.”
Severity levels (simple and useful)
- SEV 1: complaints ≥ 0.30% at Gmail or placement drops > 5 points week over week
- SEV 2: complaints 0.10% to 0.29% or hard bounces ≥ 2%
- SEV 3: early warning, trending worse but still below thresholds
Google’s bulk sender guidance gives you a clean external anchor for SEV 1 complaints at 0.3%. (Google Workspace Admin Help)
Runbook A: Spike in complaints (user reported spam)
Trigger: Complaint rate crosses 0.10% (SEV 2) or 0.30% (SEV 1) for any major provider.
Immediate containment (same day):
- Pause the top 1-2 volume campaigns on the affected domain.
- Reduce throttle limits on remaining campaigns (example: cut by 50%).
- Expand suppression:
- suppress “no engagement in 60-90 days”
- suppress role accounts if your policy excludes them
- suppress recent unsubscribes immediately across all tools
Diagnosis (within 24 hours):
- Identify the delta: what changed since last week?
- new list source?
- new copy variant?
- new AI personalization prompt?
- new sending domain or mailbox ramp?
- Break down complaints by:
- campaign
- segment
- mailbox identity
- provider (Gmail vs Microsoft vs Yahoo)
- Check unsubscribe rate alongside complaints. If unsub is high too, message market fit is off. If unsub is normal but complaints spike, the targeting may be wrong or consent expectations are misaligned.
Remediation (48-72 hours):
- Narrow ICP filters and remove edge cases. Use micro segmentation so each campaign has a clear “why you, why now.” (Related: 10 Micro-Segmentation Recipes for B2B SaaS Outbound in 2026)
- Add or tighten “first touch” guardrails:
- lower daily caps for cold cohorts
- require enrichment confidence score before send
- block sends when missing key firmographics
Prevent recurrence (policy change):
- Update your send approval workflow: high risk segments require signoff.
- Add a “complaint budget” per domain per week.
How Chronic Digital helps:
- Campaign Automation can enforce throttling and pacing at the campaign level, so you can reduce volume without breaking sequences.
- AI Email Writer can be constrained with guardrails: required personalization fields, banned claims, and safer CTA patterns, reducing “spammy” language drift.
Runbook B: Rising hard bounces (list quality failure)
Trigger: Hard bounce rate hits 1.0% (SEV 2) or 2.0% (SEV 1).
Immediate containment:
- Freeze new list uploads and new segment launches.
- Stop sending to newly added leads (last 7 days) until validated.
- Quarantine leads from the highest bounce source.
Diagnosis:
- Bucket bounces using enhanced status codes:
- 5.1.x addressing failures like non existent mailbox
- 5.7.x policy/security rejects These categories are defined under RFC 3463 enhanced mail system status codes. (RFC 3463)
Remediation:
- Re run enrichment and validation waterfall on the new leads, then:
- suppress invalid addresses permanently
- suppress unknowns until refreshed
- Tighten input rules:
- no send without company + role + verified email
- block catch all domains if your policy requires it
- Review data vendors and enrichment sources.
Cost note: if you want leadership buy in, show the true cost of low quality sends, not just the tool subscription. Use: Cold Email Cost Calculator (2026): What It Really Costs to Send 2,500 Emails Per Day
How Chronic Digital helps:
- Lead enrichment workflows can be made mandatory before a lead enters a campaign.
- Suppression logic can automatically exclude risky cohorts (recently added, low confidence, missing fields) from Campaign Automation.
Runbook C: Inbox placement drop (reputation or engagement issue)
Trigger: Seed test inbox placement down 3-5 points (SEV 2) or > 5 points (SEV 1), or clear reputation downgrade signals.
Validity reporting suggests inbox placement is a moving target, with global IPR at 83.5% in 2024 and rising spam placement through the year. (Validity)
Immediate containment:
- Reduce volume to the affected provider (example: Gmail) for 72 hours.
- Pause low intent campaigns first.
- Shift focus to higher intent audiences (product qualified, recent inbound, recent engaged).
Diagnosis:
- Check complaints, unsubscribes, and bounces first. Placement drops often follow those.
- Review content changes:
- new links/domains
- increased image to text ratio
- templated personalization errors
- Review cadence changes.
Remediation:
- Improve targeting and relevance:
- shrink segments
- adjust offers and CTAs
- add “why you” variables (role, industry, technographics)
- Re ramp volume slowly:
- day 1: 25%
- day 2: 50%
- day 3: 75%
- day 4: 100% Only if complaints remain below your thresholds.
How Chronic Digital helps:
- AI lead scoring and ICP Builder help keep volume on higher intent fits, reducing “spray and pray” damage.
- Campaign Automation throttling protects domains while you re ramp.
Guardrails RevOps should enforce inside the CRM and sequencer
A governance dashboard is only useful if you can enforce controls. Add these guardrails:
- Global suppression, not tool by tool
- Unsubscribed anywhere = suppressed everywhere.
- Send eligibility rules
- Block sends when missing required fields (company name, role, personalization tokens).
- Throttling by domain and mailbox
- Cap sends per mailbox per hour and per day.
- List quarantine
- New lists start in a quarantine state until validation and a small pilot send is successful.
- Change management
- Major copy or segment changes require an owner, a date, and rollback steps.
This is where an AI native CRM can act as a “system of action,” not just a reporting tool. If you are evaluating platforms through that lens, see: AI-Native vs AI-Enabled CRM: 9 Criteria Buyers Can Use to Spot a Real System of Action
Copyable dashboard spec (build it in Sheets, Looker, or your BI)
If you want to build fast, create a spreadsheet with these tabs:
- Scorecard (Weekly)
- Domains
- Mailboxes
- Campaigns
- Lists
- Runbooks
- Decisions Log
Minimum columns per tab:
- Scorecard: metric, value, target, status, owner, notes, next action, due date
- Domains: domain, provider, volume, complaint rate, bounce rate, placement proxy, status
- Mailboxes: mailbox, volume/day, complaint rate, bounce rate, reply rate, throttled count
- Campaigns: campaign, launch date, segment, copy version, volume, complaints, bounces, unsub
- Lists: list source, added date, validation coverage, enrichment coverage, bounces, complaints
- Decisions Log: date, decision, approver, rollback plan, outcome next week
FAQ
FAQ
What should an email deliverability dashboard include for RevOps?
At minimum: complaint rate (by provider), hard bounce rate (by enhanced status code family), unsubscribe rate, inbox placement (seed or proxy), domain reputation trend, and suppression health. It should also include owners, thresholds, and linked runbooks.
What is a “bad” spam complaint rate in 2026?
For Gmail, Google recommends keeping user reported spam below 0.1% and preventing it from ever reaching 0.3% or higher. (Google Workspace Admin Help)
Why do we need governance if SPF/DKIM/DMARC are correct?
Because authentication proves identity, not desirability. Complaints, bounces, and engagement determine reputation. Governance controls list sources, segmentation, throttling, and suppression so “bad sends” cannot scale.
How do we assign metric owners without creating chaos?
Use a RACI style split: Deliverability owner for domain health, RevOps for data quality and suppression policy, Marketing Ops for campaign execution, and Sales leadership for rep level compliance. One metric should have one accountable owner.
What is the fastest way to reduce hard bounces?
Freeze new list uploads, validate and enrich before sending, and permanently suppress addresses producing 5.x.x permanent failures. Categorizing by RFC 3463 enhanced status codes helps you separate invalid addresses (5.1.x) from policy issues (5.7.x). (RFC 3463)
Implement the scorecard this week (and make it enforceable)
- Create the seven dashboard tabs (Scorecard, Domains, Mailboxes, Campaigns, Lists, Runbooks, Decisions Log).
- Paste the weekly scorecard table and assign owners for every metric.
- Set thresholds, then pre write the three runbooks (complaints spike, bounces rise, placement drop).
- Add platform guardrails so enforcement is automatic:
- throttling,
- suppression sync,
- send eligibility rules,
- list quarantine.
- Run the first 30 minute weekly review, and log decisions like change management.
If you want this dashboard to actually prevent incidents, tie it directly to execution. Chronic Digital’s Campaign Automation and AI Email Writer are most valuable when they are configured with governance guardrails, not when they just help you send more.