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Yes. An active crisis is often how companies find us. Mail that was landing in the inbox consistently is now going to spam. Bounce rates spiked 10x. Complaints jumped from 0.2% to 2%. Engagement dropped sharply – open rates fell by 50% overnight. It happened suddenly, or at least it feels sudden, and you need to understand why it happened and how to fix it fast.
A crisis is actually one of the better times to get consulting because the problem is usually visible. You can see the damage in metrics. You just need to understand its cause so you can fix it.
Rapid Triage
When a deliverability crisis hits, your immediate need is triage: What broke, why did it break, and what’s the immediate fix? This determines whether you’re fixing something today or starting a recovery program.
Most crises fall into one of a few distinct categories:
Reputation damage: Your IP or domain reputation dropped suddenly, triggering filtering or delivery delays. This usually happens after a complaint spike or after suspicious sending activity. You’ll see mail that used to arrive in seconds now delayed by hours, or mail that used to hit the inbox now going to spam.
Configuration change: Something in your infrastructure or sending behavior recently changed, triggering filter response. Maybe you changed ESPs. Maybe you added a new sending IP. Maybe you changed your authentication setup. Maybe your DNS record got corrupted. The change happened, and suddenly everything broke.
Behavior spike: Your sending volume spiked (you ramped from 10k to 100k emails a day), or your complaint rate jumped (people are complaining at rates they weren’t before), or your engagement changed sharply (suddenly fewer people are opening). These behavior changes trigger mailbox provider filters.
List or content issue: You changed your sending list (you switched to a purchased list, or you mailed an old dormant list), or you changed your copy pattern (you started testing new subject lines that trigger spam filters). The change happened, and suddenly filtering increased.
Authentication or infrastructure problem: Something in your technical setup broke. SPF record is broken. DKIM signing stopped working. Your reverse DNS got deleted. An authentication issue that was lurking suddenly became critical.
We can often identify which category you’re in within the first 15-20 minutes. We pull your reputation data from multiple sources, look at your authentication setup, check for recent infrastructure changes, review your recent campaign volume and content, and assess your sending patterns. The category tells us what the fix will look like.
How We Approach Crisis Diagnosis
Here’s what a crisis diagnostic actually looks like. A company calls saying their transactional email started getting delayed 3 hours ago. We pull their IP reputation data and see it’s fine. We check their authentication and it’s correct. We ask what changed in the last 24 hours and they say nothing. We look at their sending volume and see it spiked 5x today compared to yesterday. We ask if that’s normal (it’s not). That’s the problem – volume spike triggered cautious filtering from mailbox providers. Fix: slow down the volume ramp, warm the infrastructure properly, wait for reputation to stabilize. Recovery: 1-2 weeks.
Different case: a company says their marketing email is suddenly going to spam. We check their reputation and see a complaint spike (0.2% baseline, 1.5% in the last 24 hours). We ask what list they mailed and they say they mailed an old subscriber list that hadn’t been mailed in 6 months. Those old subscribers didn’t recognize the mail and complained. That’s the problem – re-engaging inactive subscribers without proper re-engagement workflow. Fix: remove complainers, re-engage inactive subscribers first with preference center or gentle email, warm up before regular mailing. Recovery: 1-2 weeks.
Once we know what broke, we know whether the fix is immediate (hours), medium-term (days), or longer (weeks).
Crisis-to-Recovery Transition
A crisis diagnostic often leads to a rapid scoped engagement. You need the problem fixed fast, and you need to understand whether the underlying damage is temporary and easily fixed, or systemic and requiring real recovery.
We’ve worked through situations where a reputation dip was temporary and resolved within days once we stopped the behavior that caused it. We’ve worked through situations where reputation damage was real and required systematic recovery over 3-4 weeks (monitoring closely, adjusting volume, managing complaints). We’ve identified situations where the “crisis” was actually a single campaign that triggered filters (and every other campaign was fine – restart operations normally and the crisis is over).
The diagnostic clarifies which situation you’re in, what recovery actually requires, and how long it’s going to take.
Pattern Recognition From Experience
Crisis work is where pattern recognition matters most. We’ve seen what happens when volume spikes too fast. We’ve seen what happens when you mail a dormant list. We’ve seen what happens when reputation drops. We’ve seen how Gmail responds to one type of problem versus another. We’ve seen how Outlook’s filtering behaves differently from Yahoo. We’ve seen cases that look like reputation damage but are actually authentication problems. We’ve seen cases that look like list quality issues but are actually sending cadence problems.
When you’re in crisis mode, you need someone who can quickly pattern-match against years of experience and point you toward the real problem (not the obvious-looking problem), so you can fix it fast.
Cost of Crisis vs Cost of Diagnosis
If you’re in crisis, don’t spend days trying to debug this yourself. The cost of misunderstanding a crisis (more mail landing in spam, reputation degrading further, customer impact, lost revenue) often exceeds the cost of a quick diagnostic by orders of magnitude.
A $500 diagnostic that correctly identifies a reputation problem instead of letting you chase a list problem can cost-save a crisis situation by 10-100x. You know what to fix, you know how to fix it, you know how long recovery takes. That beats fumbling around trying random fixes for days.
Get Help Fast
Crisis response is one area where speed matters. The longer a crisis goes undiagnosed and unfixed, the more reputation damage accumulates. The longer mail goes to spam, the more customer impact. The sooner you understand the actual problem, the sooner you can fix it.
We’d love to learn more about your business, email deliverability and outreach goals, and see if we might be able to help.
Whether you have questions about what we do, how Protocol works, or you’d just like to pick our brains on some of our best practices, we’d be happy to chat.
Schedule a call with our Revenue Director, Chrisley Ceme.
Yes. An active crisis is often how companies find us. Mail that was landing in the inbox consistently is now going to spam. Bounce rates spiked 10x. Complaints jumped from 0.2% to 2%. Engagement dropped sharply – open rates fell by 50% overnight. It happened suddenly, or at least it feels sudden, and you need to understand why it happened and how to fix it fast.
A crisis is actually one of the better times to get consulting because the problem is usually visible. You can see the damage in metrics. You just need to understand its cause so you can fix it.
Rapid Triage
When a deliverability crisis hits, your immediate need is triage: What broke, why did it break, and what’s the immediate fix? This determines whether you’re fixing something today or starting a recovery program.
Most crises fall into one of a few distinct categories:
Reputation damage: Your IP or domain reputation dropped suddenly, triggering filtering or delivery delays. This usually happens after a complaint spike or after suspicious sending activity. You’ll see mail that used to arrive in seconds now delayed by hours, or mail that used to hit the inbox now going to spam.
Configuration change: Something in your infrastructure or sending behavior recently changed, triggering filter response. Maybe you changed ESPs. Maybe you added a new sending IP. Maybe you changed your authentication setup. Maybe your DNS record got corrupted. The change happened, and suddenly everything broke.
Behavior spike: Your sending volume spiked (you ramped from 10k to 100k emails a day), or your complaint rate jumped (people are complaining at rates they weren’t before), or your engagement changed sharply (suddenly fewer people are opening). These behavior changes trigger mailbox provider filters.
List or content issue: You changed your sending list (you switched to a purchased list, or you mailed an old dormant list), or you changed your copy pattern (you started testing new subject lines that trigger spam filters). The change happened, and suddenly filtering increased.
Authentication or infrastructure problem: Something in your technical setup broke. SPF record is broken. DKIM signing stopped working. Your reverse DNS got deleted. An authentication issue that was lurking suddenly became critical.
We can often identify which category you’re in within the first 15-20 minutes. We pull your reputation data from multiple sources, look at your authentication setup, check for recent infrastructure changes, review your recent campaign volume and content, and assess your sending patterns. The category tells us what the fix will look like.
How We Approach Crisis Diagnosis
Here’s what a crisis diagnostic actually looks like. A company calls saying their transactional email started getting delayed 3 hours ago. We pull their IP reputation data and see it’s fine. We check their authentication and it’s correct. We ask what changed in the last 24 hours and they say nothing. We look at their sending volume and see it spiked 5x today compared to yesterday. We ask if that’s normal (it’s not). That’s the problem – volume spike triggered cautious filtering from mailbox providers. Fix: slow down the volume ramp, warm the infrastructure properly, wait for reputation to stabilize. Recovery: 1-2 weeks.
Different case: a company says their marketing email is suddenly going to spam. We check their reputation and see a complaint spike (0.2% baseline, 1.5% in the last 24 hours). We ask what list they mailed and they say they mailed an old subscriber list that hadn’t been mailed in 6 months. Those old subscribers didn’t recognize the mail and complained. That’s the problem – re-engaging inactive subscribers without proper re-engagement workflow. Fix: remove complainers, re-engage inactive subscribers first with preference center or gentle email, warm up before regular mailing. Recovery: 1-2 weeks.
Once we know what broke, we know whether the fix is immediate (hours), medium-term (days), or longer (weeks).
Crisis-to-Recovery Transition
A crisis diagnostic often leads to a rapid scoped engagement. You need the problem fixed fast, and you need to understand whether the underlying damage is temporary and easily fixed, or systemic and requiring real recovery.
We’ve worked through situations where a reputation dip was temporary and resolved within days once we stopped the behavior that caused it. We’ve worked through situations where reputation damage was real and required systematic recovery over 3-4 weeks (monitoring closely, adjusting volume, managing complaints). We’ve identified situations where the “crisis” was actually a single campaign that triggered filters (and every other campaign was fine – restart operations normally and the crisis is over).
The diagnostic clarifies which situation you’re in, what recovery actually requires, and how long it’s going to take.
Pattern Recognition From Experience
Crisis work is where pattern recognition matters most. We’ve seen what happens when volume spikes too fast. We’ve seen what happens when you mail a dormant list. We’ve seen what happens when reputation drops. We’ve seen how Gmail responds to one type of problem versus another. We’ve seen how Outlook’s filtering behaves differently from Yahoo. We’ve seen cases that look like reputation damage but are actually authentication problems. We’ve seen cases that look like list quality issues but are actually sending cadence problems.
When you’re in crisis mode, you need someone who can quickly pattern-match against years of experience and point you toward the real problem (not the obvious-looking problem), so you can fix it fast.
Cost of Crisis vs Cost of Diagnosis
If you’re in crisis, don’t spend days trying to debug this yourself. The cost of misunderstanding a crisis (more mail landing in spam, reputation degrading further, customer impact, lost revenue) often exceeds the cost of a quick diagnostic by orders of magnitude.
A $500 diagnostic that correctly identifies a reputation problem instead of letting you chase a list problem can cost-save a crisis situation by 10-100x. You know what to fix, you know how to fix it, you know how long recovery takes. That beats fumbling around trying random fixes for days.
Get Help Fast
Crisis response is one area where speed matters. The longer a crisis goes undiagnosed and unfixed, the more reputation damage accumulates. The longer mail goes to spam, the more customer impact. The sooner you understand the actual problem, the sooner you can fix it.
Our Revenue Director, Chrisley Ceme, is leading the Triggered Outbound program.Chrisley’s gone deep on this strategy and can walk you through:
- How Triggered Outbound fits with your outbound goals
- What triggers are available (and what’s possible within our platform)
- Pricing, onboarding, and getting started
