You're sending emails and nobody's responding. Then you check your analytics and realize your open rates dropped from 35% to 8% over the last two weeks. You haven't changed anything about your process. Your domain is burned.
A burned domain means your sender reputation has tanked - ISPs and email providers are filtering your messages into spam, or blocking them entirely. It happens faster than most people think, and the signs are pretty clear once you know what to look for.
Here's how to tell if your domain is actually burned, and what you can do about it.
Your Open Rates Dropped 50%+ in a Week
This is the most obvious signal. If you were consistently hitting 30-40% open rates and suddenly you're at 10-15%, something broke.
The key is looking at the timing. A burned domain doesn't usually die slowly - it crashes. You'll see a cliff, not a gradual decline. One week you're normal, the next week you're in the basement.
Check your email provider's bounce reports at the same time. If your hard bounce rate jumped from 2% to 15%+, that's ISPs actively rejecting your mail. They're not even letting it sit in spam - they're refusing delivery.
A hard bounce over 5% means your domain reputation is compromised. Over 10% means it's burned.
Gmail and Outlook Are the Problem, Not Just Spam Folders
There's a difference between landing in spam and getting blocked entirely.
If your emails are in spam, they're still delivered - people can find them if they dig. If you're getting blocked, the email never arrives. Your recipients won't even see a failed delivery notice.
You can test this yourself. Send an email to a Gmail address you control and one to an Outlook address. Check both the inbox and spam. If they're hitting spam consistently, that's a deliverability issue - fixable with better domain warming and list quality.
But if they're not arriving at all, and you're seeing hard bounces in your sending platform, Gmail and Outlook have flagged your IP or domain as a spam source.
You're Getting Spam Complaints on Fresh Lists
Spam complaints (also called abuse reports) tell you something important: people are marking your emails as spam, not just ignoring them.
A normal campaign might see 0.1% complaint rate. Anything over 0.3% is bad. Over 1% means your domain is at serious risk.
The critical part: if you're seeing complaints on a brand new list where you've validated emails, that means your sending pattern itself is the problem. You're not targeting the wrong people - your domain is just flagged.
Pull your complaint rate from your ESP (Mailgun, SendGrid, etc.). If it's creeping up even slightly over a week, stop sending immediately. That's your early warning.
Your Replies Dropped But Nothing Changed in Your Copy
You sent 500 emails. Last month that got you 15-20 replies and 2-3 sales conversations. This month you sent 500 more and got 2 replies.
If your email copy, targeting, and offer are all the same, but replies cratered, that's not a copy problem - that's a deliverability problem. Your emails aren't reaching inboxes.
The trickiest part about a burned domain is that it's not always obvious. Your sending platform might show