Jimmy KimCEO & Founder, Commerce Roundtable · Marketer of 17+ Years, 4x Founder. Former DTC/Retailer & SaaS Founder. Newsletter. Host of ASOM & Send it! Podcast. DTC Event: Commerce Roundtable

When to Abandon Your Email Domain and Start Fresh

30 Mar 2026 · 0 min

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In this segment, Jimmy Kim explains that email inbox providers will not grant a clean slate to domains with a history of spam or consistently poor engagement. When a domain’s reputation is severely damaged—such as after repeated failures on a demand‑side platform (DSP) and no remediation—the provider’s trust is lost. Kim argues that attempting to “warm up” such a burnt domain is ineffective, likening it to trying to repair a completely destroyed credit score. The practical recommendation is to acquire a new domain and start fresh, as this is the only viable path to regain deliverability when the existing domain’s reputation is irreparably harmed.

Worst case scenario. All right. Can I tell you what that looks like? Yeah, let's do it. So if your domain has poor historical reputation, like you were doing poorly on the last DSP and you never fixed it and you came over here, the inbox providers won't give you a clean slate. It's usually because the domain was used for spam or they just have so much history of poor engagement, they don't want to trust you anymore. So what do you do? So this one's painful, but you need a new domain. You can't warm up a burnt domain. It's like trying to rehab a credit score that's already destroyed. Sometimes you just need to start fresh.