What’s the minimum engagement threshold for recovery sends?
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When your sender reputation is in recovery mode, you can't afford to send to your whole list and hope for the best. The signals you generate during recovery carry more weight than normal. ISPs are watching closely, and weak engagement during this window can undo the progress you've made.
So what numbers should you actually be targeting? Here's the honest answer.
Open rate: 25% minimum, 30%+ is better. This sounds high, but it's intentional. You're not trying to reach everyone right now. You're trying to prove to ISPs that the people receiving your emails actually want them. If your opens are below 25%, your safe send segment needs to be tighter, not your content strategy.
Complaint rate: below 0.1%. This is non-negotiable. Even in normal sending, Google's Postmaster Tools flags anything above 0.1% as a concern. During recovery, complaints are especially damaging because they signal to mailbox providers that your list still has problems. If you're seeing complaints creep up, stop. Tighten your segment before you send another batch.
Bounce rate: below 1%. High bounce rates during recovery suggest your list has aged addresses or unverified contacts still in the mix. If you haven't cleaned your list before starting recovery, now is the time. (We clean lists at RME if you need a hand ;))
Click rate: above your historical average. There's no universal number here because click rates vary so much by industry and content type. What matters is trending upward compared to your baseline, not matching someone else's benchmark.
The logic behind all of this is simple. Recovery works by sending positive signals to ISPs. Every open, every click, every lack of complaint tells the receiving server that you're a sender worth trusting. Weak engagement doesn't move the needle. It just confirms the problem.
If you're not hitting these thresholds, the answer isn't better subject lines. It's a smaller, more engaged audience. Reduce your segment size, drop your send frequency, and look hard at how those contacts got onto your list in the first place.
The good news is that these thresholds aren't permanent. As your reputation recovers, you can gradually reintroduce colder segments and relax the bars a little. Start strict, loosen slowly, and never drop below healthy industry norms for your vertical.
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