What is email reputation?

Email reputation (also known as sender reputation) is a score by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that measure your email sending practices. Each ISP will give you a score, so your reputation will change depending on the ISP. Score

Think of your email reputation as a credit score rating — it takes time to build up a good reputation, but you can also easily destroy it if you’re not careful.

Email reputation matters a great deal. The biggest reason for this is the impact your email reputation has on email deliverability. 

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What criteria do IPSs use to rate email reputation?

  • Send volume: the number of emails you send in one go. Most IPSs will consider multiple emails sent in one go from one IP address to be a red flag, thereby increasing the chance of your emails ending up in spam folders, which ultimately harms your email reputation.
  • Send frequency: how many email campaigns you run per month or week. Some IPSs limit the number of emails received from a single IP address in a given period. Make sure you look into why you need to send multiple emails in a short period of time and decide whether your strategy could be optimised to increase your email reputation.
  • User interaction: who opens your emails, clicks on your links but also who deletes or unsubscribes from your mailing list. With Lead Gen & CRM, you can customise your email reports to fully understand your users’ interaction with your emails. You should also consider adding an “Unsubscribe page” linked in your emails (as opposed to just the “unsubscribe” link so you can see the reasons behind people unsubscribing.
  • The quality of your emails and lists: make sure your database is clean (read more here).

SharpSpring Email Sender Status

3 tips to improve your email reputation

TLS Digital Media is here to help you reach your clients in the most effective way. Here are some of our top tips:

  • Reduce complaint rates by refraining from sending unsolicited mail and avoid super sales-y language as it’s more likely to get picked up by spam filters. You want your readers to feel like you’re in a conversation, not be spoken at with generic messaging, 
  • Personalise your emails
  • Authenticate. Authenticate. Authenticate. One of the sure-fire ways to keep up a good email reputation is to make sure your DKIM settings are correctly set up and making sure your IP address is not blacklisted anywhere.

 

By now you’re probably wondering — how do I find out my email reputation and how can I assure its health going forwards? With TLS Digital Media, we can help you with your initial assessments and work with you to improve your score. One of the best features of SharpSpring CRM, which our clients use, is simple email reporting. You are in constant awareness of your email deliverability and where you can improve on.

 

Start your digital marketing journey and hit your email targets – get in touch today with us here!