Email Deliverability: Reputation, Sender Score and Deliverability

How Does Email Sending Reputation Effect Email Deliverability?

Email sending reputation is a rating which itself consists of different reputations for email deliverability. The three major reputations that matter are:

1. IP Reputation – refers to how much people want to receive email from this IP address. This reputation is based on bounces, spam and unwanted mail. This method proved useful, but as spam emails became more complex, a new reputation had to be developed.
2. Content Reputation – refers to the supposed quality of the email. Does the email contain any bad attachments or obvious scam wording? It can be affected by low open rates, flagged, blocked and unsubscribes.

Together, IP Reputation and Content Reputation work to determine how effective a sender’s email practices are. IP Reputation analyzes emailing history while Content Reputation looks at the content and determines if the email being sent is trustworthy.

3. Domain Reputation – refers to the quality of authenticated emails. Often times, domains and IPs are on different providers. Domain reputation services check the information being sent is authentic.

Making sure you are following proper email practices will have an impact on your email deliverability. Proper list management and providing relevant content is essential.

What is Sender Score?

Return Path’s Sender Score is a rating from 0 to 100, which is an indicator of how effective your email practices are. Sender Score takes into account several factors when determining your score. The Sender Score takes a look at:

• Complaints – calculated by comparing to the number of accepted emails
• Volume – if you send large amounts of email that is delivered, you’ll have a better score
• External Reputation – compares your IP address to others in the network
• Unknown Users – how many emails were sent to users that did not exist
• Rejected – compares how many emails were rejected to other IP addresses

However, Sender Score is just one measure on how effective your email marketing efforts are. If your ISP uses Sender Score, then great. However, not every ISP relies on Sender Score.

Tips to Improve Your Email Reputation

1. Authenticate your SPF and DKIM

Making sure you have email authentication systems, such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Email (DKIM) system will contribute to a strong domain reputation. Having both will prevent spammers from delivering emails through your domain.

2. Consider Your Email Needs

Creating separate email accounts for marketing and transaction emails can have several benefits. This will ensure that both sets of email will not suffer from problems from the other. This also allows better tracking of all emails.

3. Pay Attention to Data

Pay attention to import email statistics such as open rates, click rates, complaints, engagement rates and unsubscribes. Most email providers will have this information available to you.

4. Segmenting, Multivariable Testing and Personalization

All of these are becoming popular techniques to improve email deliverability. Segmenting your list based on demographic information or by purchasing behaviour is one method to deliver more relevant emails. Multivariable testing (or A/B Testing) is used to test small changes to an email (or any marketing material) to find out what resonates with your audience. Finally, personalizing emails using the information you’ve collected will improve the chance of someone opening up your email.

5. Follow Best Practices

Make sure to clean your lists regularly. Have a double opt-in to ensure people who are joining your mailing list are truly interested.

When planning your email marketing campaigns, technical issues are just as important as creative decisions. Paying attention to your IP Reputation, your Content Reputation and your Domain Authority are essential. Using services such as Sender Score or Google’s Postmaster Tools can give you some information about your sending reputation. Need help designing or deploying your next great email campaign? RAVEN5 is here to help – we are experts at contests, sweepstakes and promotions.

Need more reading material? Here’s some Email Marketing Trends to look out for! What’s the best way to structure your website? Here’s an article comparing Subdomains versus Subfolders.

Jesse Bickerton, RAVEN5, March 2019

Sources

https://www.mailjet.com/blog/news/sender-score-and-email-reputation/

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