Is my email sending healthy?
Deliverability is the thing most email tools leave you to learn the hard way. Bernard watches it for you and tells you where you stand in one card.
The prompt
“Check the sending health for [my site], tell me whether anything is paused and why, and say what I should do about it.”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
The traffic light
Healthy means your recent email arrived and nobody complained. Worth watching means one of the two numbers is drifting towards its limit, and a little list tidying is the answer. Paused means bernard has stopped sending for now, and the card says exactly why.
The two numbers that matter
Did not arrive. Some addresses stop existing. A few is normal; a lot means your list has aged, and continuing to send to it damages how every future email of yours is treated. Addresses that keep failing are retired for you and appear on Who is on my do-not-email list, and why?.
Marked as spam. This is the serious one, and the limit is deliberately small. It usually means people are hearing from you about something they do not remember asking for, so the fix is who you send to, not how you write.
Both are shown against the limit bernard allows, over the last thirty days. Until you have sent a reasonable amount the percentages do not mean much, and the card says so rather than pretending.
When sending is paused
A pause always says three things: what is stopped, what bernard is doing, and what you can do. Common reasons are a first complaint while your sending address is warming up, too many failing addresses, or bernard still finishing your sender setup. One more reason is specific to an imported list: a single spam complaint from somebody whose permission was brought over from another email tool pauses campaign sending for the site straight away, and the card names it plainly rather than folding it into a general warning. You can keep writing and previewing throughout, and the card turns green when sending reopens.
Permission you brought over
If you have imported a mailing list, the card carries a block of its own for it: how many of your audience currently rest on permission you brought over, how many are still waiting and the day they join, and the cap on your next campaign while it still applies. When can I email the people I just imported? is the full timetable behind these numbers, including what happens on the first complaint.
For the first 48 hours after campaign sending opens, there is also a daily ceiling of 200 people, and it lifts when those hours end. Reaching it turns the card to Worth watching, not Paused. That is not a fault; it is how a new address earns its reputation, and it is bernard’s own rule. Why are my first emails limited? explains the warm-up in full, How does email sending work, and do I need my own address? explains the address itself, and Why can’t I send my email campaign? lists every check that can stand between a draft and a send.
Keeping it healthy
Send to people who asked, and recently. Bernard now finds the second part for you: once twenty or more of your contacts have gone a full year with no order, no form and no campaign reaching them, a Quiet contacts section appears on this tab and offers to stop emailing them in one step you can undo. How do I tidy my mailing list once a year? explains what it counts and what it deliberately does not claim.
The extra address in your setup
On a site that is recording opens and clicks, your setup check reports some extra records alongside the ones that let you send: a web address on your own domain that your readers’ clicks pass through, and the records that prove it is yours. Turn opens and clicks off and they are not asked for at all. Can I see who opened my email? covers what decides whether your site is recording. Those records are optional. Nothing about sending waits on them, and a campaign goes out whether or not you have published them. Until they are live, clicks pass through bernard’s shared address instead, and the reader still lands on the page you linked to. Can I see who opened my email? covers what is recorded and for whom.
Bernard also checks each address as it arrives, whether from a form, a purchase, a course enrolment or a spreadsheet. An address that is misspelled, or whose domain accepts no email at all, is flagged on that person’s contact page and counted on the import result. It is only ever a flag: the contact is still created and bernard still tries the address. Say something worth reading rather than sending more often. What happened after I sent my email campaign? shows the same picture for one campaign rather than for the site as a whole.
Questions people ask
- Where do I see it?
- Open Your customers, then the Email campaigns tab. The Sending health card shows a traffic light, the last thirty days of results, and one sentence of advice. Approving a campaign works exactly as before; this card only tells you the state of your sending.
- What are the two numbers?
- How many of your emails did not arrive, and how many people marked one as spam, each shown against the limit bernard allows. Both are counted over the last thirty days, so one bad day does not decide it.
- Do you show opens and clicks?
- Not on this card. Sending health is about whether your email is arriving at all, so it reports delivery, failures, complaints and unsubscribes. Opens and clicks are recorded for the readers who agreed to it and shown under each campaign instead.
- What is the extra web address in my setup for?
- It is the address your readers’ clicks pass through on their way to your pages, so they see your own domain rather than somebody else’s. The records for it are optional and never block sending: campaigns go out whether or not you have published them. Until they are live, clicks go through bernard’s shared address. Adding them to your DNS is an approved change like any other record.
- What is the single best thing I can do for these numbers?
- Keep the list current. Once twenty or more of your contacts have gone a year with no order, no form and no campaign reaching them, a Quiet contacts section appears on the same tab offering to stop emailing them in one step. See the Tidy your mailing list guide.
- Sending is paused. What now?
- The card says why, what bernard is doing about it and what you can do. You keep writing and previewing while you wait, and the card turns green when sending reopens. Ask bernard to reopen sending once you have approved the change it suggests.
- What does the ‘Permission you brought over’ block mean?
- It only appears once you have imported a list. It says how many of your audience rest on permission you brought over from another email tool, how many are still waiting and the day they join, and the cap on your next campaign while it still applies. See the guide to what happens after a mailing list import for the full timetable.