Every year we see the same pattern: brands ramp send volume 4–6x heading into BFCM, hit a spam trap or two, and watch their Gmail placement collapse the week revenue matters most. The damage is usually invisible until it's catastrophic.
The 6-week pre-peak audit
Week -6: Pull a full list health report. Suppress anyone inactive 180+ days who hasn't clicked.
Week -5: Validate authentication. SPF, DKIM, DMARC at p=quarantine minimum. BIMI ready if eligible.
Week -4 to -2: Begin volume warmup. Add no more than 25% week-over-week to your engaged segment.
Week -1: Freeze list onboarding from paid acquisition. Spam traps spike from quick-fire lead-gen.
What we look for in a reputation audit
Gmail Postmaster reputation history, complaint trends, spam trap exposure, domain age signals, and BIMI/VMC eligibility. If any of these show degradation, the fix is structural — not a subject-line tweak.
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