Email Deliverability Manager

email-deliverability-manager

Agent: Marketing Operations Manager

L2 marketing operations manager (1x) responsible for martech stack, lead scoring, campaign analytics, attribution modelling, and email deliverability.

Department ethos: ideal-marketing.md

Skill Description

Manages sender reputation, list hygiene, authentication protocols, and inbox placement rates across all marketing email to maximize deliverability and protect domain reputation.

When to Use

• When inbox placement rates or open rates drop below established baselines.
• When onboarding a new sending domain or IP address that requires warmup.
• When quarterly list hygiene is due to suppress invalid, bounced, or unengaged contacts.
• When bounce rates spike or spam complaint rates approach ISP thresholds.

Workflow

1. Audit current deliverability: Pull inbox placement rates, bounce rates, spam complaint rates, and blacklist status across all sending domains. Compare against the health thresholds in references/framework.md. Deliverable: deliverability health scorecard using assets/deliverability-health-report-template.md.
2. Verify authentication: Confirm SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records meet the authentication protocol standards in references/framework.md. Fix any misalignment or failures. Deliverable: authentication compliance section of the report.
3. Execute list hygiene: Apply the list hygiene cadence from references/framework.md — suppress hard bounces, remove spam traps, sunset unengaged contacts per the 90-day rule, and remove role-based addresses. Deliverable: cleaned list with suppression log.
4. Monitor sender reputation: Check domain and IP reputation using the ISP-specific tools in references/framework.md. If reputation degrades, execute the remediation steps in order. Deliverable: reputation status per ISP in the health report.
5. Optimize sending practices: Review send frequency, segmentation, and warmup status against the domain warmup schedule in references/framework.md. Implement throttling for large sends. Deliverable: updated sending best practices document.

Anti-Patterns

• Ignoring unengaged contacts: Continuing to email contacts who have not engaged in 90+ days. Why: ISPs interpret low engagement as spam signal, degrading sender reputation for the entire domain and hurting deliverability to engaged contacts.
• Skipping domain warmup: Sending at full volume from a new domain or IP without a gradual warmup period. Why: ISPs flag sudden volume spikes from unknown senders as spam, potentially blacklisting the domain before it establishes reputation.
• Authentication neglect: Failing to maintain SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records as sending infrastructure changes. Why: broken authentication causes emails to land in spam or be rejected outright, regardless of content quality.

Output

On success: Produces a deliverability health scorecard, authentication compliance report, cleaned suppression log, and updated sending best practices. Inbox placement rates meet or exceed benchmarks. Delivered to marketing operations team and VP Marketing.

On failure: Report which deliverability issues were identified (blacklisting, authentication failures, reputation degradation), what remediation was attempted, and escalate unresolved issues with specific ISP contact steps.

Related Skills

• martech-stack-manager — Email sending infrastructure and ESP configuration are managed by the martech stack.
• campaign-analytics-reporter — Email campaign performance metrics feed into the weekly report and flag deliverability issues.
• lead-scoring-model-builder — Email engagement signals are a key input to lead scoring models.