Deliverability, spam and bounces

Question 1

Does open tracking hurt deliverability or send emails to spam?

Accepted Answer

Nobody can promise either way: spam filters weigh many signals, and a tracking image and rewritten links are two of them. In HawkOpen tracking is off until your company’s owner or an administrator switches it on, only recipients whose consent is recorded get a tracked copy, and a campaign can switch open or link tracking off when you want the plainest possible email.

Question 2

How many emails can I send a day from Gmail or Outlook with HawkOpen?

Accepted Answer

Your mail provider sets the daily limit, not HawkOpen, because HawkOpen sends through your own Gmail, Outlook or IMAP/SMTP account. HawkOpen’s own limits for campaigns are 50 recipients per campaign on Free and 500 on Pro and Business, plus 60,000 a month on Business.

Question 3

Does HawkOpen meet the Gmail and Yahoo bulk sender requirements?

Accepted Answer

Partly. Every email ends with a “Do not send me messages” link, campaign emails also carry a one-click unsubscribe header that points to it, and they leave from your own mailbox. Domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is set up by you in your domain’s DNS; HawkOpen does not check it.

Question 4

Why do my emails go to spam?

Accepted Answer

Common causes are a domain without SPF, DKIM or DMARC, sending to old or unknown addresses, recipients marking you as spam, and sudden large volumes. HawkOpen shows bounces and rejections, but it cannot see where an email landed in someone’s mailbox.

Question 5

Why does my email not reach the recipient?

Accepted Answer

Either the provider refused or returned it (a bounce), or it arrived but went to spam or another folder. HawkOpen shows the first case per message; for the second, ask the recipient to check spam and other folders.

Question 6

What is DMARC and do I need it?

Accepted Answer

DMARC is a DNS record of your domain that tells receiving servers what to do with mail that fails SPF and DKIM checks. If you send from your own domain, especially to many people, you should have it. You set it up in your domain’s DNS; HawkOpen does not create or check it.

Question 7

What is an email bounce, and what is the difference between a hard and a soft bounce?

Accepted Answer

A bounce is a message the receiving server sends back because it could not deliver your email. A hard bounce is permanent (the address or domain does not exist); a soft bounce is temporary (full mailbox, server busy). HawkOpen stops sending to an address after a hard bounce.

Question 8

How do I check SPF, DKIM and DMARC for my domain, and does HawkOpen check them?

Accepted Answer

HawkOpen does not check them: it does not read DNS records. You can check them yourself with a DNS lookup tool and in the headers of an email you sent to yourself.

Step by step: look up the TXT records of your domain in a DNS lookup tool. SPF is a record starting with v=spf1, DMARC is a TXT record at _dmarc.yourdomain, and DKIM is a key published under a selector your mail provider gives you. Then send an email to a Gmail address and open “Show original”: it shows whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC passed. Other providers show the same in the Authentication-Results header.

On the Business plan, every Deliverability Guardian report ends with a reminder to verify SPF, DKIM and DMARC with your sending provider, because HawkOpen has no DNS evidence of its own. If a check fails, ask whoever manages your domain to fix the record.

Question 9

How do I set up DKIM for my domain on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

Accepted Answer

DKIM is switched on in your mail provider’s admin console, which gives you a key to publish in your domain’s DNS. HawkOpen sends through your own mailbox, so it uses whatever DKIM your provider signs with and has no DKIM setting of its own.

In general the steps are the same: in the admin console (Google Admin for Workspace, the Microsoft Defender portal for Microsoft 365) generate or enable DKIM for your domain, copy the record it shows, add it at your DNS host, wait until it is visible, then press the button that starts signing. Follow your provider’s current help page, because the menus change.

Set up SPF and a DMARC record at the same time. HawkOpen does not create or test these records; on the Business plan its Deliverability Guardian only reminds you to verify them with your provider.

Question 10

What does the bounce “550 5.7.515” from Microsoft mean?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft refused the email because your sending domain did not pass the required authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC). HawkOpen records it as a hard bounce and stops sending to that address.

Microsoft’s consumer mail (Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live) asks domains that send a lot of email to pass SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Fix the records with whoever manages your domain, check them in the headers of a test email, and only then write to that address again; HawkOpen will not resend on its own.

Question 11

Does HawkOpen monitor spam complaints and the Gmail spam rate?

Accepted Answer

No. HawkOpen does not receive spam complaints and does not read Google Postmaster Tools. It records unsubscribes, bounces and rejections; your spam rate at Gmail is visible only in Postmaster Tools.

Google’s sender guidelines ask senders to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.1% and never to reach 0.3%. To see yours, verify your domain in Postmaster Tools; it shows data only once you send enough email to Gmail users.

What helps in HawkOpen: every email ends with a visible “Do not send me messages” link and campaign emails have a one-click unsubscribe header, so people can leave instead of pressing “spam”, and addresses that unsubscribed are skipped later. The Deliverability Guardian on the Business plan has no complaint figure.

Question 12

What is the HawkOpen Deliverability Guardian?

Accepted Answer

It is a Business plan check of what happened to your emails in the last 30 days: accepted, rejected, deferred and bounced. It gives a score with reasons and pauses bulk sending when bounces or rejections are too high.

Hard bounces of 1% are marked as elevated, 2% as high and 5% as critical. Once at least 20 emails were submitted, bulk sending (campaigns) is paused at 5% hard bounces, at 10% rejections by providers, or when 10% of sends have no clear outcome. Single emails are not stopped. Each report lists what to fix first, such as cleaning the list.

The Guardian works only with what HawkOpen can see. It does not measure inbox placement, does not read SPF, DKIM or DMARC records, and has no spam complaint figure; it reminds you to verify domain authentication with your provider.

Question 13

Does HawkOpen send my emails through its own servers or a dedicated IP?

Accepted Answer

Neither. HawkOpen hands each email to the SMTP server of the mailbox you connected (Gmail, Outlook or your IMAP/SMTP provider), so it leaves from your provider. There are no HawkOpen sending IPs and no dedicated IP.

This applies to single emails and to campaigns. Your provider’s reputation, authentication and daily limits therefore apply, and if the provider refuses a message, HawkOpen records the refusal. A Gmail or Outlook account connects by signing in with Google or Microsoft; other mailboxes connect with IMAP/SMTP settings.

If you need a dedicated IP, that is a question for your mail provider, not for HawkOpen.

Question 14

Is there a suppression list for unsubscribed and bounced addresses?

Accepted Answer

Yes. An address that bounced hard is blocked at once, one with repeated soft bounces is set aside, and addresses that unsubscribed or asked HawkOpen to erase their data are skipped. Campaigns never send them a copy.

HawkOpen reads delivery failure notices from your connected mailbox and records a bounce on the message, so you see it next to the recipient. When you create a campaign, the skipped addresses are listed with the reason, and if every address is blocked the campaign is not created.

The list is yours: an unsubscribe applies to your whole company, a bounce to the sender who sent the email, and other HawkOpen customers are not affected, except by erasure requests made by the recipient. On the Business plan, each bounce can also be sent to your own system as a signed message.bounce webhook.

Question 15

Should I track opens and clicks in cold email?

Accepted Answer

Open counts are a weak signal in any outreach, so many senders switch open tracking off and keep link clicks and replies; HawkOpen lets you do that per campaign. HawkOpen also tracks only recipients whose consent is recorded for your company, so people who have not consented get an ordinary email. Its terms do not allow unsolicited bulk messaging.

Apple Mail Privacy Protection and mail-provider proxies load images without a person, and security systems click links within seconds. HawkOpen labels such events, but an open stays a hint. A reply, or a click a person makes later, tells you more. Some cold-email guides also point out that a tracking image and rewritten links are extra signals for spam filters.

If you write to people who did not ask for your email, check the rules that apply to you and to them first. Every tracked email from HawkOpen carries a short notice about tracking.

Whether you may send a message and whether you may track it are two separate questions.

Where rules that require consent apply, tracking may start only after that consent has been obtained. The link in the message lets the recipient withdraw consent later.

Question 16

Why is my email not sending or stuck in the outbox?

Accepted Answer

Usually the mail app or the mailbox is the cause: no connection, a wrong password or expired sign-in, an attachment that is too large, or a sending limit reached. For emails sent through HawkOpen, each recipient shows its state: queued, accepted, deferred or rejected.

In Outlook or another mail app, check that you are online, sign in again, remove large attachments and look for an error message on the stuck email. If your provider has paused sending because of its daily limit, wait until the limit resets.

HawkOpen hands each email to your mailbox’s server. If the server answers “try later”, HawkOpen tries again several times with growing pauses; a permanent refusal is shown as rejected. If it is unclear whether the server already took the email, HawkOpen does not send it again, so nobody gets it twice. If a connected mailbox stops working, reconnect it in HawkOpen.

Question 17

Can an email tracker tell me whether my email went to spam?

Accepted Answer

No. An email filed as spam produces no bounce: to the sender it looks accepted. A tracker only sees that no open or click came, and that can also mean blocked images or simply not read yet.

HawkOpen shows whether the provider accepted, deferred, rejected or bounced each email, and labels opens and clicks with their likely source. It does not measure inbox placement and cannot see folders in someone else’s mailbox.

To find out, send a test to accounts you control at Gmail, Outlook and other providers and look where it lands, or ask the recipient to check spam. If many people never open anything, look at your domain authentication and at who you are writing to.

Question 18

Why do my tracked emails land in the Gmail Promotions tab?

Accepted Answer

Gmail decides the tab from the whole message: many links and images, marketing layout and sending patterns push it towards Promotions. Tracking alone does not decide it, but a tracking image and redirected links add to that picture.

To make an email look personal, write plain text with one or two links and no banner images. In HawkOpen you can switch open tracking and link tracking off separately for a campaign (for the whole account, your company’s owner or an administrator decides), and compare where your tests land.

Question 19

What does a “Message blocked” or rejected sending error mean?

Accepted Answer

A mail server refused your email, either your own provider or the recipient’s. The error text and its code say why: codes starting with 5 are permanent, codes starting with 4 are temporary. HawkOpen shows the result per recipient.

Common reasons are an address that does not exist, a domain that fails authentication, content or links the filter dislikes, or a sending limit. HawkOpen retries temporary refusals a few times and marks a permanent one as rejected; after a hard bounce it stops sending to that address. Read the error text, fix the cause and only then write again.

Question 20

Why do my emails still go to spam although SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up?

Accepted Answer

Authentication only proves that the email really comes from your domain. Whether it lands in the inbox depends mostly on reputation: who you write to, how they react, how much you send and what the message looks like.

Typical causes: a new domain or mailbox that suddenly sends a lot, old or bought addresses that bounce, people who did not expect your email and mark it as spam, and messages full of links, images or sales words. Send gradually, write only to people who know you, remove addresses that bounce and keep emails short and personal.

HawkOpen shows per message whether the provider accepted, rejected or bounced it; on the Business plan the Deliverability Guardian also pauses bulk sending when hard bounces or rejections get too high. It cannot see spam folders and does not measure your reputation with Gmail or Microsoft.

Question 21

Should I turn off click tracking on plain (naked) links to protect deliverability?

Accepted Answer

It can help: when a link shows one address but leads through another, filters may treat it with suspicion. In HawkOpen you can switch link tracking off on its own for a campaign or a message, and your company’s owner or an administrator can do it for the whole account, while open tracking stays.

HawkOpen rewrites only https links, through its own redirect address; http links, mailto links and others stay as you wrote them. Without link tracking you lose click signals, which are usually more useful than opens, so decide per campaign. Clicks by security scanners are labelled either way.

Question 22

What is an acceptable email bounce rate?

Accepted Answer

As low as possible: with a clean list of people you know, hard bounces stay well under 1%. HawkOpen’s Deliverability Guardian marks 1% hard bounces as elevated, 2% as high and pauses bulk sending at 5%.

These thresholds are HawkOpen’s own conservative yardstick over the last 30 days, not an industry benchmark; published averages differ by source. Soft bounces (temporary) are judged separately. If the rate climbs, stop using the source of the failing addresses before sending more.

Question 23

Which email metrics should a small business watch?

Accepted Answer

Start with replies, link clicks by people, bounces and unsubscribes. Treat open rate as a rough hint only, because privacy features and scanners load emails without a person.

HawkOpen shows per recipient opens and clicks with a label for their likely source, replies, bounces and unsubscribes; a campaign also counts copies sent, skipped, failed and cancelled. On the Business plan the Deliverability Guardian adds bounce and rejection rates for the last 30 days. Compare the same metric over time rather than against general averages.

Question 24

How can I improve my email open rate?

Accepted Answer

Write a clear, specific subject, send to people who expect you, at a sensible frequency, and from a recognisable name. Measure the effect on replies and clicks, because open rate is distorted by Apple Mail Privacy Protection and scanners.

HawkOpen has no automatic subject-line A/B test in campaigns. On the Business plan, the Experiments page lets you compare two variants: you declare the hypothesis, the metric and the minimum sample in advance, and no winner is declared before that sample is reached. HawkOpen also labels opens by their likely source and counts machine and proxy opens apart from observed ones, which have no sign of a machine but do not prove that a person opened.