Cold Email Domain Guardian

Domain health review

Scope: Fictional facts only. No DNS records, mailbox-provider dashboards, headers, legal records, or live reputation data were inspected. Current provider requirements and applicable law must be checked before action.

Risk summary

High, immediate: The upcoming event list has unclear consent provenance. Pause import and sending until source, collection purpose, permissions, suppression status, and applicable outreach rules are verified. Do not use the list to test deliverability.

High: Hard bounces at 3.2% indicate a list-quality problem if measured accurately and consistently. Stop sending to invalid addresses, review acquisition source and validation practices, and protect existing customer mail streams.

High: Complaints rose from 0.05% to 0.18%. Confirm provider-specific complaint signals, denominators, campaign, and audience; pause or sharply constrain affected outreach while root cause is investigated.

Medium / unknown: SPF content is unknown, DKIM is enabled for only one provider, and DMARC is p=none. This does not establish misconfiguration, but domain alignment and all authorized senders need verification.

Immediate containment (today)

1. Freeze the event-list import and related campaigns until provenance, permission, and suppression checks pass.
2. Pause the campaign or segment associated with the complaint and bounce increase; do not route it through a different domain or provider to avoid enforcement.
3. Preserve evidence: campaign IDs, timestamps, recipient source, bounce categories, complaint signals, and provider notices. Remove or suppress invalid and opted-out recipients under the approved process.
4. Check that transactional and customer-support mail remain isolated from marketing operations and are not disrupted.
5. Assign an owner in deliverability, security, and legal/compliance to coordinate review.

Verification checklist

30-day remediation plan

Days 1–3: Pause uncertain data and affected campaigns; validate complaint/bounce measurements; inventory authorized senders and DNS records; honor suppression events.

Days 4–10: Correct confirmed authentication or alignment gaps through reviewed changes. Remove unauthorized senders. Document list provenance and approval requirements. Test only with owned mailboxes and provider-approved diagnostics.

Days 11–20: Rebuild list acquisition controls, verify permission and suppression sync, segment by source and engagement where lawfully appropriate, and update relevant message expectations and opt-out paths.

Days 21–30: Resume only after responsible owners approve a conservative, provider-compliant plan. Monitor complaint, bounce, unsubscribe, and delivery signals; define pause thresholds from current provider guidance. Run an incident exercise and keep audit evidence.

Guardrails

Do not rotate domains/IPs to escape poor reputation or enforcement; do not manufacture engagement or conceal sender identity; do not send to unclear-consent lists. Escalate suspected spoofing, compromise, or provider enforcement using the provider’s official incident process.