Before configuring anything, it helps to understand a handful of terms that come up throughout the platform. This isn't technical jargon: these are the ideas every good email marketing decision rests on. Once you've got these concepts down, the rest of the documentation reads itself.
Subscriber list
A list is the container that groups your contacts. Every subscriber belongs to at least one list. You can organize them however suits you: by type of relationship (customers, prospects), by product, by market, or by any criteria that fits your business.
The list is the basic unit: campaigns are sent to one or more lists. And here's a tip worth its weight in gold: instead of keeping "Argentina List," "Chile List," and "Mexico List" separate, it's better to have a single list and apply segments at send time.
Subscriber and permission
A subscriber is a person who agreed to receive your communications. That word — agreed — is at the heart of everything: professional email marketing rests on consent.
A list built on explicit permission opens more, complains less, and keeps your reputation healthy. A list that's bought or gathered without permission produces the opposite effect and damages every legitimate send coming from your same domain.
Tip: quality beats size. A base of 5,000 engaged contacts performs better than one of 50,000 mostly inactive ones. Inactive contacts drag your reputation down.
Sender and certification
The sender is the address your campaigns come from (for example, [email protected]). For destination servers to accept it without suspicion, it needs to be certified with two protocols:
- SPF: states which servers are authorized to send on behalf of your domain.
- DKIM: adds a digital signature that confirms the email wasn't altered and comes from who it claims to.
You don't need to understand the technical detail: the panel guides you, and if you don't manage your domain's DNS, you can hand it to whoever does. The step-by-step is in verify your sender.
Important: free inboxes (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook) can't be certified with SPF and DKIM. Used as a sender, they end up in spam almost every time. For professional email, always use your own domain.
Sending reputation
Reputation is a score that mail providers assign to your domain and to the IP addresses you send from. High reputation = you reach the inbox. Low reputation = you land in spam or get rejected outright.
It can't be bought: it's built over time, by sending consistent volume, keeping bounces and complaints low, and earning good open rates. arrobaMail protects it with its own sending engine; you can see it in deliverability.
Bounces
When an email can't be delivered, the destination server returns a bounce. There are two types:
- Soft bounce: the recipient exists but there was a momentary issue (full inbox, server down). The system retries on its own.
- Hard bounce: the address doesn't exist or the domain is invalid. The subscriber moves to blocked and doesn't receive future sends.
Unsubscribes and complaints
Every professional send includes a clear unsubscribe link. Whoever unsubscribes stops receiving your emails instantly and can't be reactivated without new permission.
Complaints happen when someone marks your email as spam from their inbox. Every complaint hits your reputation hard, which is why the acceptable rate is measured in fractions of a percent (ideally below 0.1%). The best defense is sending only to people who gave permission, at the right frequency.
Frequency and list quality
Two variables sustain success over time:
- Frequency: a reasonable cadence keeps your audience engaged; overdoing it produces fatigue, falling open rates, and unsubscribes. It varies by industry, but one to two times a week is usually a good starting point in B2C, and once a week in B2B.
- List quality: keep your list clean — cleaning up bounces and re-engaging inactive contacts. It's an ongoing task, not a one-time job.
Health Score: your reputation in one number
arrobaMail sums up your account's reputational health in a Health Score from 0 to 100, calculated from several factors (bounces, complaints, import quality, list hygiene, sender authentication, and more). It gives you a quick read:
| Score | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 80–100 | Healthy | Keep up your current practices. |
| 60–79 | Attention | Check what changed and fix it before it gets worse. |
| 40–59 | Medium risk | Pause large campaigns and clean up your lists. |
| 0–39 | Critical | Stop non-essential sends and contact support. |
With these concepts clear, continue with lists and subscribers or head back to the map in getting started.