Methods and systems for predicting a proposed electronic mail (email) for an email campaign to be sent to a list of email addresses received from a sender is spam. A hard bounce rate is predicted for the list of email addresses based on hard bounce rates calculated for respective email addresses on the list. If predicted hard bounce rate exceeds a threshold, the proposed email is deemed spam and sender may be informed. If predicted hard bounce rate falls within range of the threshold, proposed email may be sent to less than all the email addresses on list. If an acceptable number of the sent emails are received, the email may be sent to remaining email addresses on list. Prior to sending proposed email, the list of email addresses may be compared to purchased lists of email addresses. If there is a match, the proposed email may be deemed spam.