“A bad email reputation is like a hangover: hard to get rid of, and it hurts everything else.” – Christ Marriott.
So, safe to say that if your email sender reputation is stinking, even engaging email copy, great designs, or the most intriguing subject line might not get you anywhere except the junk folder.
And this serious problem requires you to treat the cause instead of using a band-aid approach.
In this article, we’ll explore what email sender reputation is and how you can recover from a bad one.
An Internet Service Provider or ISP assigns a score to a business sending emails. It’s just like your credit score that determines your reliability and authenticity.
The score is given on a scale of 0 to 100. The closer you are to 100, the higher your chances are of landing in your subscriber’s inbox. On the other hand, a low score can throw your hard work in the spam or even reject it directly.
But the good news is that the ISPs don’t hand out the email sender score randomly. It’s calculated on some specific metrics, which means you can always work towards improving it.
Using shared IPs might seem a cost-effective alternative for a budding business. But sending your emails through it can impact your sender score compared to using a private or dedicated IP. It’s because shared IPs are used by other businesses, and their actions directly affect your sender score.
The sender score isn’t readily available for you to check. But there are many paid and free tools to analyze the email sender reputation.
Some most popular are:
1. Invest in Dedicated IP
You might be limiting the returns of your email marketing campaigns if you rely on shared IPs to communicate with your contacts.
Shelling out a few bucks for a private or dedicated IP can save you a lot of headaches. Contrary to shared IP, it won’t be affected by the actions of other organizations.
With shared IP, if even one organization is misusing it, the ISPs will flag the IP address, and it will impact the sender score of every other organization using that shared resource.
2. Get the Authentication Right
Since domain reputation weighs heavy while calculating the sender score, it demands special attention.
Before you start shooting emails, configure your email domain for the following authentication processes.
When both these keys match, mail servers allow the email to be delivered to the recipient. It ensures that only trusted sources reach the recipient.
3. Build List Hygiene
You can’t expect a good sender reputation if you send messages to any email address you can get your hands on. Because the fact is not every contact, you purchased even exists. That’s why limiting the intrusion of spam addresses from your contact list is a must.
4. Build List Balance Quality & Quantity
Maintaining the content quality and the right frequency to sustain a healthy relationship with your subscribers is crucial.
When you plan your email campaign for dedicated days of the week, the readers also start expecting and anticipating your message. But if you only rely on the burst of inspiration to shoot emails, it can limit the effects or even lead you to spam.
5. Safeguard Email Reputation With Sub-domain
If you are using your domain for email campaigns, the recipient’s response to it will impact your domain reputation too. And if the results aren’t good, it can also hamper your transactional communication.
So, to separate these two, create a sub-domain and dedicate that to your email marketing. The reputation garnered by the sub-domain won’t have any consequences on your parent domain.
6. Warm-up Your IP
Using a new IP is exciting because it has no bad record that can damage your sender reputation.
But before you start launching full-fledged campaigns, pause.
ISPs track the email volume for the IP addresses, and any sudden change in the email traffic can raise red flags. That’s why it’s highly critical to lead your way gradually with the new IPs.
7. Conduct Deliverability Audits
Monitoring your email reputation can avoid any surprises and prepares you better for the journey. And email deliverability plays an essential role in determining your overall sender reputation.
Here are some key metrics to look out for:
Tracking this data becomes more manageable if you use an ESP to trigger your email campaigns.
8. Implement Sunset Policy
Sunset policy is a simple method to assess your contact list and make it more targeted.
Here’s how you can use it:
Email reputation demands constant effort to maintain it. It’s not a one-time exercise.
If you are already struggling with a severe sender reputation, then immediately stop your campaigns. Let it cool down for a while before restarting the communication.
Many tools provide a blacklist delisting option too. You can request deleting your IP from this index if it’s not being used for spam. After verification, if the claim is found to be accurate, you can retrieve the sender reputation.
Nonetheless, ensure that your campaigns are done with proper planning, followed by vigilant monitoring.
However, using a little extra set of helping hands never hurts. So, invest in a good email sender & validation tool that backs your effort with the best industry practices. SendPost can be the perfect match for developers, businesses, and ESPs to integrate the APIs and enjoy a better sender reputation with boosted deliverability.