Why Your Keap Emails Aren't Reaching People (and How to Fix It)

Quick answer: when Keap emails stop reaching people, check three things in this order. First, whether your sending domain is authenticated with DKIM and has a DMARC record, which Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft now expect. Second, how much of your list has slid into Keap's Unengaged Marketable or Unengaged Non-Marketable statuses, which happens after four and six months without engagement. Third, whether broadcasts keep going to people who stopped opening months ago, which drags down delivery for everyone else on the list.

First, work out which problem you have

"Our emails aren't reaching people" covers a few different failures, and they have different fixes.

• Emails land in spam or promotions. That's usually authentication or sender reputation.
• Emails never leave Keap for some contacts. That's usually email status: Keap won't send marketing to contacts it considers non-marketable.
• A campaign never sends the email at all. That's automation: a goal that doesn't fire, a paused sequence, or a contact stuck in a step.

Open the record of someone who says they didn't get an email and look at two things: their email status and their campaign history. That one contact usually tells you which of the three you're dealing with.

Step 1: Authenticate your sending domain

Keap's own authentication guide, updated in June 2026, puts it plainly: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft "now require all senders to authenticate their sending domain with DKIM and align it with DMARC." In Keap that means three steps.

1. Add the three DKIM CNAME records Keap generates for your domain at your DNS host, then wait for Keap to show the domain as connected.
2. Publish a DMARC record if you don't have one. For a new record Keap suggests starting with v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; pct=5; rua=mailto:you@yourdomain.com, which asks receiving servers to quarantine a small share of mail that fails authentication while you watch the reports.
3. Change the sending address on your Keap user profile to an address on the authenticated domain.

Don't send marketing from a free address like Gmail or Outlook. Keap's own write-up of the Google and Yahoo rules notes that they will no longer deliver marketing email sent from free domains, and there is no DNS record you can add to a domain you don't own.

Two cautions about DMARC. It covers everything that sends as your domain, including your own mailbox, your invoicing tool and your website's contact form, so read the reports before tightening the policy past Keap's starting point. And if a DMARC record already exists, edit it rather than adding a second one; a domain with two DMARC records effectively has none.

Step 2: Check your list's email statuses

Keap tracks an email status on every contact and uses it to decide who can receive marketing. According to Keap's email status definitions, the two that catch people out are these.

• Unengaged Marketable: no open, click or web form submission in the last four months. Keap still sends to these contacts, but treat it as a warning.
• Unengaged Non-Marketable: no engagement for six months or more. Keap stops sending these contacts marketing email, and you can't manually reactivate them. They become marketable again only by engaging, for example by opening or clicking an email they already received.

Keap checks engagement every Saturday and moves contacts in or out of these statuses then. Those are Keap's defaults, and Keap Max Classic lets an admin adjust the thresholds, so check your account's settings rather than assuming them. Pull a count of contacts by status. If a third of your list is unengaged, your real audience is two-thirds of the number you've been quoting, and broadcasts sized to the whole list will underperform no matter how good the copy is.

Step 3: Stop emailing people who stopped listening

Mailbox providers watch how recipients react. When a large share of a broadcast goes unopened, gets deleted unread or gets marked as spam, your reputation drops for the whole list, including the people who want your email. The fix is unglamorous.

• Send broadcasts to engaged segments, not the entire list.
• Run a short re-engagement sequence for contacts nearing the thresholds: two or three emails with a genuine reason to click.
• Let go of the ones who don't respond. A smaller list that opens beats a bigger one that doesn't, for delivery and for sales.
• Keep complaints low. Google's sender guidelines ask bulk senders to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.1 percent and never reach 0.3 percent.

Step 4: Check the automation itself

If the contact is marketable and the domain is authenticated, but a specific email never went out, the problem is inside the campaign. Look for:

• A goal listening for a tag, form or purchase that no longer happens. Forms get replaced and tags get renamed, and the goal keeps waiting.
• A paused or unpublished sequence, or one that was edited and never republished.
• A timer anchored to a date field that is empty or already in the past.
• A website form that stopped posting to Keap after a plugin update. Submit it yourself, like a customer would.

When to bring in help

If you've worked through all four steps and mail still isn't landing, the next layer is reputation and history: blocklists, a sudden jump in volume, years of sending to old or purchased lists, or another service damaging the domain's reputation. That's where a Keap audit earns its fee, because deliverability rarely has a single cause. We do this as a Keap Certified Partner, and deliverability is part of every account we review.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are my Keap emails going to spam?

Most often because the sending domain isn't authenticated with DKIM and DMARC, or because the emails are sent from a free address like Gmail. The next most common cause is poor engagement: broadcasts going to large numbers of people who never open them. Authenticate the domain first, then narrow your sends to engaged contacts.

What does Unengaged Non-Marketable mean in Keap?

It means the contact hasn't opened an email, clicked a link or submitted a web form in six months or more. Keap stops sending them marketing email, and you can't reactivate them manually; they become marketable again only by engaging.

How do I set up DKIM in Keap?

Keap generates three CNAME records for your domain. Add them at your DNS host, wait for Keap to show the domain as connected, then change your profile's sending address to one on that domain. Keap also recommends a DMARC record, suggesting p=quarantine with pct=5 as the starting point for a new one.

How often does Keap update email statuses?

Weekly. Keap checks email engagement every Saturday and moves contacts into or out of the unengaged statuses at that point.

Should I delete unengaged contacts from Keap?

Not necessarily. Keep the records if they hold purchase history or notes you need, but stop sending them marketing. Keap's price rises with contact count, though, so an honest cleanup can also lower your bill.