Legacy Real Estate Team

Legacy Real Estate Team, operating under the domain legacyrealestateteam.com, partnered with SH Consulting facing critical email deliverability challenges that were threatening their ability to communicate with clients and prospects.

The team was sending the majority of their marketing emails through Sierra Interactive, which was connected to a SendGrid account, while using Google Workspace for their day-to-day business communications and one-to-one client emails.

Analysis of Legacy's SendGrid account revealed an 85% blocking rate, meaning nearly all emails sent to major mailbox providers including Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, and Microsoft were being rejected before they could even reach recipients' inboxes or spam folders.

The situation had deteriorated to the point where even team members' personal one-to-one communications were being blocked, creating significant operational challenges for the business.

All reputation signals, both IP and domain, were showing critical status across all available sources. Open rates had plummeted to below 15%, and the team was essentially unable to reach their database through email.

This level of deliverability failure typically results from prolonged poor sending practices, and recovery requires immediate intervention and a carefully orchestrated rehabilitation strategy.

SH Consulting implemented a comprehensive recovery strategy focused on domain reputation rehabilitation and strategic sender management.

Phase 1: Immediate Intervention

The first critical step was to . pause all outbound email from legacyrealestateteam.com. This was accomplished by disconnecting Sierra Interactive from SendGrid, which allowed Legacy to continue sending marketing emails using Sierra's shared domain (agentofficemail.com) while their primary domain reputation recovered.

Simultaneously, SH Consulting engaged directly with Postmaster teams at several major mailbox providers including Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Phase 2: Strategic Re-warming

After a two-week pause in sending from the Legacy domain, SH Consulting guided the Legacy team in carefully reintroducing email campaigns. Rather than using Sierra Interactive, these initial campaigns were deployed through Followup Boss to a highly curated segment of the database.

The initial audience was selected based on strong engagement signals; recipients who had recently opened emails or demonstrated other indicators of interest and likelihood to engage. This approach ensured that the first emails from the recovering domain would generate strong positive engagement signals.

Over approximately five weeks, sending volume was gradually increased in a measured, controlled manner. The audience expansion followed proven IP warming principles, eventually reaching campaign sizes of over 30,000 recipients while maintaining strong engagement metrics.

Phase 3: Automation Optimization

In parallel with the manual campaign rehabilitation, SH Consulting conducted a comprehensive audit of Legacy's automated email workflows in the GGMS platform. This audit identified several areas of concern:

• Over-mailing: Some automations were triggering too frequently and lasting too long
• Audience selection issues: Certain workflows were targeting overly broad or inappropriate recipient segments: repeatedly sending to recipients who are not engaging with the content.

Working directly with GGMS, adjustments were made to both audience sizing and sending frequency across multiple automated workflows, significantly reducing reputation risk while maintaining the effectiveness of the automation program.

Immediate Impact

The results of the controlled reputation repair strategy were exceptional and exceeded expectations:

• Open rates consistently exceeded 50% during the initial recovery phase
• As sending volume increased, open rates stabilized in the low 30% range - representing more than double the original 15% rate

Reputation Recovery

The strong engagement metrics from the controlled sending strategy produced immediate improvements in sender reputation across all major mailbox providers:

• Domain reputation with Google has improved from Bad/Low to High

Long-Term Transformation

Beyond recovering from the immediate crisis, Legacy Real Estate Team transformed their entire email program into a more efficient, more effective operation:

This transformation demonstrates a fundamental principle of email deliverability: quality and engagement matter far more than volume.

Legacy Real Estate Team's recovery from an 85% blocking rate to a high-performing, efficient email program demonstrates that even severe deliverability crises can be successfully resolved with the right strategy and expert guidance.

The key elements of their successful recovery included:

Today, Legacy Real Estate Team maintains a strong sender reputation across all major mailbox providers and has established a foundation for sustainable growth. They are now well-positioned to expand their email program with confidence, including implementing regular newsletters and more aggressive re-engagement campaigns - opportunities that were completely unavailable during their deliverability crisis.

Most importantly, Legacy's story demonstrates that in email deliverability, sending smarter beats sending more.