Email sender reputation is a hot topic in the email marketing world. Networks use email sender reputation to determine whether or not to deliver email messages to subscribers’ inboxes. If your email sender reputation is poor, your messages may end up in the spam folder – or they may not be delivered at all. In this blog post, I will discuss how networks determine your email sender reputation and ways that you can take care of your email sender reputation. I’ll also provide some best practices for email sender reputation and tips on how to increase your email sender reputation.
How Networks Determine Your Email Sender Reputation
There are a few factors that networks take into account when determining your email sender reputation. These include:
- Checking your email sending history for bounces, spam complaints, and unsubscribes (the quality of your email contacts).
- Your sending volume.
- The quality of your email content.
- Your email frequency.
- Level of email engagement.
- The number of spam traps you hit.
- Quality of email content.
Checking Your Email Reputation
The best way to check your email sender reputation score is to use a tool like Sender Score or Talos. Sender Score tools will give you a score between 0 and 100, and Talos will tell you how your email sender reputation compares to other senders in your network.
Take Care of Your Reputation
In order to take care of your email sender reputation, you should aim to reduce bounces rates, unsubscribe rates, and low quality content. You should also avoid emailing too frequently, as this can lead to email fatigue.
How Your Email Reputation Declines
There are a few things that can cause your email sender reputation to decline. These include:
- Sending to email addresses that don’t exist (hard bounces).
- Sending email messages that get marked as spam.
- Sending email to email addresses that have been inactive for a long time (lazy bounces).
- Sending email to spam traps.
- Low engagement rates (people not opening or reading your email).
- Using cold IP addresses.
Hard Bounces
A hard bounce is an email that cannot be delivered because the email address is invalid. To avoid hard bounces, you should make sure that your email list is up-to-date and that you’re only emailing valid email addresses.
Spam Complaints
If people mark your email as spam, this will cause your email sender reputation to decline. To avoid this, you should make sure that you’re only emailing people who have opted-in to receive email from you. You should also avoid using misleading subject lines and including too many links in your email.
Inactive Email Addresses
An email address is considered inactive if it hasn’t been used in a while. This can be due to people unsubscribing from your email list, deleting their email address, or changing their email address.
Spam Traps
An email spam trap is a email address that is set up by email networks (or websites) to detect email senders who are trying to abuse email. If you email addresses that are on spam trap lists, your email sender reputation will decline. To avoid this, you should make sure that you’re only emailing people who have opted-in to receive email from you. Never ever use and gather email addresses from websites.
Low Engagement Rates
If people aren’t opening or reading your email, this will cause your email sender reputation to decline – Because ESPs are now monitoring how users interact with email in their inbox. To avoid this, you should make sure that your email content is relevant and interesting to your audience. You should also segment your email list so that you’re only emailing people who are interested in the content that you’re sending.
Using Cold IP Addresses
If you’re using a new IP address to send email, this can cause your email sender reputation to decline. This is because email networks don’t know anything about your IP address and they may think that you’re a spammer. To avoid this, you should warm up your IP address by sending a few email messages to your email list before slowly building to larger sending volumes for your email campaign.
Best Practices for Email Sender Reputation
There are a few best practices that you can follow in order to maintain a good email sender reputation. These include:
Reducing Bounce Rates
One way to take care of your email sender reputation is to reduce your bounce rate. A high bounce rate indicates to networks that you are not sending email to valid addresses, which can hurt your email sender reputation. There are a few ways to reduce your bounce rate:
- Use an email verification service like Validity or QuickEmailVerification to clean your email list.
- Remove email addresses that have bounced from your email list.
- Keep your email list up-to-date by removing inactive email addresses.
Reducing Unsubscribe Rates
Another way to take care of your email sender reputation is to reduce your unsubscribe rate. A high unsubscribe rate is an indication that people are not interested in the email content that you’re sending. There are a few ways to reduce your unsubscribe rate:
- Send relevant and targeted email content.
- Segment your email list so that you’re only emailing people who are interested in the content that you’re sending.
- Avoid emailing people who have already unsubscribed from your email list.
Avoid Low Quality Content
If you’re sending low quality content, this will cause people to mark your email as spam or unsubscribe from your email list. To avoid this, you should make sure that your email content is high quality and relevant to your audience. You should also proofread your email content before you send it out.
Effects of Email Frequency
If you’re emailing people too often, this can cause them to mark your email as spam or unsubscribe from your email list. To avoid this, you should make sure that you’re only emailing people when you have something relevant and interesting to say.
Also, during the subscribe invitation, you should let subscribers know how often you will email them.
Checklist: How to Increase Your Email Sender Reputation
There are a few things that you can do to increase your email sender reputation:
- Send high quality and relevant email content.
- Segment your email list so that you’re only emailing people who are interested in the content that you’re sending.
- Keep your email list current and fresh, by removing inactive email addresses.
- Remove email addresses that have bounced from your email list.
- Use an email verification service to clean your email list.
Conclusion
Email sender reputation is important because it’s how email networks determine whether or not your email is spam. There are a few things that you can do to take care of your email sender reputation, including reducing your bounce rate and unsubscribe rate, avoiding low quality content, and increasing your email frequency. You can also increase your email sender reputation by sending high quality and relevant email content, segmenting your email list, and keeping your email list fresh.
By following these tips, you can make sure that your email sender reputation is in good standing.
You can learn much more about the importance of an email sender reputation, by visiting our Small Business Email Marketing posts. As well as find out further about Email Sender Reputation.