Here are 5 determinants of sender reputation which you don’t know

83% of deliverability issues are caused by sender reputation. Not only recipients, ISPs will also determine whether to accept your message based on your reputation. Your email will be delivered to SPAM folder if ISPs rate you as untrustworthy sender. Let’s see 5 factors determining your IP reputation.

  5 determinants of sender / IP reputation 

1.  High SPAM complaint rate 

When a user marks your email as SPAM in their Inbox, their mailbox providers will blacklist your email address, blocking any of your future emails to that user. Mailbox providers also measure the amount of spam complaints your email addresses receive over time. Every time a user marks your email as spam, it counts towards their mailbox provider's decision whether to mark all emails from your domain as spam or send them through to inboxes.
* Remember that your SPAM complaint rate should not over 0.1%

2.  High bounce rate – Hygiene of send list 

So, what is a bounce? When you receive a bounce back, this means your email is not delivered to recipients’ mailboxes. Bounce can be defined as hard bounce and soft bounce.

• Hard bounce: 
  • The email address is not valid 
  • The email server blocks your email
    • You can remove these users as you can no longer send to these email addresses
• Soft bounce:
  • Recipients’ inboxes are temporarily full 
  • The email servers of recipients do not respond temporarily
  • Temporary network issue 
    • You can resend your email to soft bounced email address

High bounce rate will affect your IP reputation which in turn your email being filtered as SPAM by ISPs. Bounce rate will remain high if you do not manage your bounce properly after each release of eDM campaign. For example, soft bounce should be regarded as hard bounce if you cannot reach the recipients after 3 – 5 times trial. You also have to remove hard bounce before next release of eDM campaign.
*Pay attention with your send list once the bounce rate exceeds 5% or delivery rate drops below 95%. One of the reasons of high bounce rate is that ISPs have already blocked your messages. You have to contact ISPs in this case.

3.  High volume 

ISPs may suspect you of spamming if you blast eDM in bulk using only one IP within a short period of time. Rather than that, send you eDM in several releases or IPs to reduce risk of being suspected.

4.  Lack of authentication 

Many email marketers may not have the knowledge of authentication. First, whitelisting your IP reduces the risk of being blocked by SPAM filters. For example, UFOSend has registered as bulk sender which allows plenty of email servers to deliver in a quick rate. Then, make sure you have set up sender authentications like Sender Policy Framework (SPF), sender ID and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) signature. They help you to get rid of SPAM filters.

• With SPF, email servers allow you to send email by evaluating your IP’s authenticity in public Domain Name System [DNS]. 
• Sender ID evaluates your eDM content using Purported Responsible Address (PRA), focusing on sender email. 
• With DKIM, ISPs will match two keys to ensure that you are verified sender. One of the key is publicly saved in DNS and another one is a private key which is only visible to the email server. 

With various authentications, delivery rate can be augmented.

5.  SPAM filter trigger Content 

Watch out for SPAM filter trigger words when you are creating catchy subject title. You email will be delivered to SPAM folder if you misuse SPAM trigger words. Read more on the list of SPAM trigger words. Furthermore, SPAM filter may block email without plain text version. Do not overlook SPAM issue when you are designing your eDM content.

Build up sender reputation is as important as brand reputation. In order to grow brand reputation, you have to build up IP reputation first so that you can deliver message to your valued subscribers successfully. Establishing sender reputation actually is the first and vital step of email marketing. You can always check your IP reputation usingSender Score. Still troubled with SPAM issues? Comment and discuss!