Deliverability, spam filters, and email reputation are topics that are familiar to both novices and experts in the field of email verification. Whether an email reaches the recipient’s inbox depends not only on its content, but also on several other factors.
When you send an email, email services first check the domain and IP address. Therefore, maintaining a reliable domain reputation is crucial when sending mailings to boost sales, marketing campaigns, etc.
What is “domain reputation”?
The reputation of the sender’s domain works on the principle of a credit rating. It is assessed by email services on a scale from 0 to 100. The servers of email recipients will trust your emails more if this indicator is close to the maximum value.
An excellent email reputation means that you can send emails through the most appropriate channels. This means that when the recipient receives your email, they are more likely to trust its content and your company.
How to check the reputation of a domain?
Domain trust significantly affects the effectiveness of email marketing. Email service providers use reputation scores to determine the level of trust in your emails. If your trust rating is too low, your emails will end up in the spam folder instead of the inbox. These could be confirmation or order status emails, delivery updates, etc. Therefore, sending emails from a domain with a poor reputation leads to a loss of potential customers and a decrease in sales.
The email service provider independently determines the reputation of your domain. For example, Gmail uses a single domain reputation, while Yahoo uses a separate indicator, as does Microsoft Mail. This is because each email service can assess the reputation of a domain based on the emails it receives from it. Emails sent to other email services are not available to them.
Reputation is searched for using tools that collect average ratings from various email providers. To check the domain’s trust rating, you can use the Google Postmaster Tools service.
How to improve domain reputation?
When sending emails, it is good practice to develop a clear algorithm for working with letters and filling them with relevant content. In order to improve or maintain your existing reputation, we recommend paying attention to the following methods.
Warming up IP addresses
When you get a new IP address, it doesn’t have any history. Spammers often change their IP addresses to avoid getting blocked or caught by spam filters. Sending a lot of emails from a new IP address will make email services and internet providers think you’re a spammer. To solve this problem, we recommend “warming up” the IP address: gradually increase the volume of emails sent, for example, 100 emails per day, increasing to the maximum value. This period will take about half a month.
Email authentication procedures
Authentication technologies are widely used by email services to detect suspicious malicious emails or spam. The procedure is considered an important part of the overall reputation of a domain. There are several methods, the most common being SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
SPF authentication involves establishing and verifying the sender’s identity. This confirms the authenticity of the email sender and reduces the possibility of fraud. There are many tools available for creating and verifying SPF records.
DKIM authentication prevents emails from being edited during transmission. This type of authentication prevents man-in-the-middle attacks, where emails are forged during transmission from one party to another. There are also free services available for creating and verifying DKIM records.
DMARC authentication requires mail servers to be informed about how to verify the authenticity of emails. After receiving information about the relevant protocols, services can warn servers whether an email is really yours. Tools for checking and creating DMARC records can be easily found in a search engine.
Regularity of campaigns
To develop a healthy perception of your mailings among your audience, try to develop a schedule for sending them at regular intervals. A lack of consistency can be misinterpreted by your subscribers and mislead them. This way, you will not only develop good practices in communicating with your audience, but also maintain or improve your rating as a sender.
Verification of subscriber base
Use specially designed tools or consult specialists to check your subscriber lists for inactivity or passivity. With this analysis, you can easily work only with an interested audience, limiting the likelihood of spam-related problems.
Refusal to shorten links
On the one hand, shortened links look better and more attractive, but unscrupulous individuals can use this method for their own purposes. Shortened URLs with malicious content can easily be disguised as any content in order to get the user to click on a link that they would never click on under ideal circumstances. Therefore, spam filters are very cautious about this method of using the service.
Monitoring sender rating
One of the main reasons for low ratings is the lack of constant monitoring of email reputation. Although today there are many tools for evaluating the delivery of each letter, marketers are strongly advised to keep an eye on this indicator — it ranges from 0 to 100, with anything above 90 considered ideal.
It is worth noting that successful email delivery requires a set of measures that improve your overall reputation. Make sure that the content of your emails is safe, corresponds to your domain category, and meets the expectations of your readers. Only then will your emails be delivered to their destination and bring maximum results.