Email Deliverability: List Hygiene That Holds Up Through a Bad Week for the Domain

A clean list depends on more than the playbook

Every month the deliverability lead runs the list through the playbook. Hard bounces are cleaned, repeat soft bounces past the cap are suppressed, complaints are unsubscribed, and long-inactive subscribers move to a re-engagement segment. Each change is a status and a reason on a Mailchimp subscriber, and the playbook itself is a Google Doc. Then email operations picks which of the week's draft campaigns go out inside the send-window cap.

The playbook is not the only input. Requesting desks write in about specific people: a customer who unsubscribed by mistake, a complaint flag that was a misclick. Compliance overrides a few dispositions outright. A reputation incident on the sending domain tightens the soft-bounce cap overnight. Each of those lands in a different inbox or Slack channel, and the subscribers still pending at month end quietly drop out of the next cycle.

Who works in the room

Deliverability work sits in one Kylon room. Myco is the room's default agent, since subscriber dispositions are most of the work, so a question about why someone was cleaned goes straight to it. Fin owns the send window and the review of email operations' file, and Ada answers the people who wrote in. Myco and Fin both read Mailchimp through a lasting grant the deliverability lead approved for the room, and only Myco proposes subscriber changes. For the monthly pass, Myco splits the list across parallel helpers, one per segment, and gets back a single set of proposed changes. When a desk asks for a confirmation, Myco hands it to Ada with the subscriber, the change and the exact wording requested.

September's cycle, stage by stage

The playbook is a Google Doc, the weekly notices land in the run folder in Google Drive, and the room guidelines set the order of precedence: a compliance override first, then the playbook.

A bad week for the sending domain

A reputation incident cuts the soft-bounce cap from five in thirty days to three. The notice names a few subscribers as examples, but the cap applies to everyone. Myco checks every subscriber with a soft bounce on record, not only the ones named, proposes the changes by segment, and waits for the deliverability lead. Subscribers already suppressed for another reason stay as they are.

A compliance override pulls the other way. When compliance says a subscriber's status stands regardless of the playbook, the override wins, and Myco records it as the reason so next month's pass does not undo it. Every subscriber still pending when the cycle closes gets a carry-forward mark in Mailchimp, so the October pass starts with them instead of losing them.

What the checks catch

• A subscriber the playbook would clean but compliance has overridden, who keeps the override
• A tightened soft-bounce cap applied only to the subscribers named in the notice
• A send-window file line for a campaign that is not in this week's window
• A pending subscriber left without a carry-forward mark
• A reply drafted as a new email instead of on the thread the person wrote on

What stays with people

• Approving every status change before it is written in Mailchimp
• Issuing a compliance override, which only compliance decides
• Settling the final send window with email operations
• Sending each reply Ada drafts, and signing the cycle's log lines

Integrations in this workflow

Kylon is not an email service provider and it does not replace Mailchimp. It sits across Mailchimp, the playbook and the team's inboxes and keeps the month's decisions in one room.

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Drive
• Mailchimp
• Slack

• Mailchimp holds the subscribers, their status and reason, the draft campaigns and the carry-forward mark
• Google Docs holds the deliverability playbook and the Deliverability Log
• Google Drive keeps the run folder with the send-window policy, the draft file and each notice
• Gmail carries replies to the people who wrote in, sent by a person from Ada's drafts
• Slack is where email operations and the requesting desks post quick corrections

Where to start

Begin with the next month's pass. Connect Mailchimp with a grant for the room, link the playbook, and write the precedence into the room guidelines: compliance overrides first, then the playbook, and no status changes until the deliverability lead approves.

Set it up with your agent

Open a new Room, add your agent and paste this prompt. It connects the tools, builds the App with you and asks for your rules one step at a time, and nothing goes out until a person approves it.