A DTC skincare brand: spam-complaint rate, pulled under Gmail's 0.3% limit
over 8 weeks
≈180,000 subscribers
- Sector
- DTC skincare (Shopify)
- Platform
- Klaviyo
- List size
- ≈180,000 subscribers
- Engagement
- Deliverability audit + repair
- Timeframe
- 8 weeks
Where they started
This brand had grown its list fast through giveaways and a high-volume welcome offer. For two years that worked. Then revenue per campaign started sliding, and the team assumed creative fatigue and kept rewriting subject lines.
The real problem was placement. By the time they came to us, Gmail was throttling their sends and a noticeable share of campaigns never reached the primary inbox. They were paying to email 180,000 people and reaching a fraction of them.
What we found
- Spam-complaint rate at 0.42%, above Gmail's 0.3% enforcement line and far above the 0.1% target.
- Inbox placement at 78% in GlockApps seed testing, with most misses landing in Gmail Promotions and Spam.
- DMARC was not published, and SPF had a soft-fail that broke alignment on a third of sends.
- Roughly a quarter of the list had not opened or clicked in more than 12 months and was dragging reputation down.
What we did
Authenticate the domain
We published SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and moved DMARC to p=quarantine once alignment held, so mailbox providers could verify every send. We added the one-click unsubscribe header Gmail and Yahoo now require from bulk senders.
Sunset the dead weight
We built a re-engagement campaign for cold contacts, then suppressed everyone who stayed silent. Cutting the unengaged quarter of the list hurt the vanity count and helped the reputation that actually decides placement.
Re-warm the sending domain
We rebuilt volume over three weeks, starting with the most engaged segments and widening daily, so Gmail relearned that this domain sends wanted mail.
Measure, then hand back a playbook
We re-tested placement weekly in GlockApps across Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo, and documented a sending and list-hygiene policy the in-house team now runs.
The results
spam-complaint rate (Gmail target is below 0.1%)
inbox placement in GlockApps testing across Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo
click-through rate on the same campaigns after re-warming
Eight weeks in, inbox placement moved from 78% to 96% and the complaint rate dropped from 0.42% to 0.08%, comfortably under Gmail's 0.1% recommendation. The team did not write better emails. The same campaigns simply started reaching people.
Click-through rate on identical sends rose 31%, which is the tell that placement was the bottleneck all along. Revenue followed without a single extra contact on the list.
Figures are illustrative of a representative engagement and sit within current industry benchmarks. Client identity withheld.
“We thought our emails had gone stale. It turned out half of them were never arriving. Fixing the boring infrastructure was the highest-return thing we did all year.”
What happens now
We still run a monthly placement check and a quarterly list-hygiene review so the reputation we rebuilt does not slip back.
Deliverability Audits & Repair
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