What is a Sender Score and How to Improve It

A sender score is a rating that determines if your email lands in the inbox or the spam folder. With a good score, even minor mistakes are okay. But emails with a low rating can miss the recipient's inbox altogether, even if they seem to follow all the rules.

Checking your rating on senderscore.org

Below, we will take a closer look at what a sender score is, why it is needed, and how to improve it.

Why Track Your Sender Score

A sender score is a very important factor. Here's what it affects:

Delivery

Email services like Gmail and Outlook don't just randomly send emails to your inbox. They carefully check the sender's reputation before delivering the message. This is like a trust indicator that is calculated based on various factors.

First, email services check whether the sender is actually who they claim to be (authentication). Second, it is important to them whether people usually open messages from this sender. Third, email services take into account whether users delete emails immediately. Finally, they check whether emails are sent to non-existent addresses (the bounce rate).

Protection

Email services combat fraud through the sender reputation. Cybercriminals often disguise themselves as well-known brands to deceive users and trick them into revealing personal information such as bank card numbers, passwords, and other confidential data.

If a sender's score is low, their email message will be marked as spam or even blocked altogether. In this way, the sender reputation protects users from fraud.

Campaign Success

A strong sender reputation is a direct indicator that a brand's email campaigns are popular with subscribers. A decline in this metric is a red flag and a reason for careful analysis of the causes.

What Affects Your Sender Score

Email sending volume and frequency directly impact sender reputation. Too many emails, especially from a young IP address, will lead to it being blocked. Start with moderate volumes and gradually increase them. Additionally, implement authentication methods (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to enhance trust.
Spam complaints are a serious problem. To minimize them, create high-quality, interesting emails and adhere to a reasonable sending frequency.
Spam traps are fake addresses that negatively affect your reputation if they get into your database. Regularly clean your list and use email address verification services.
The bounce rate should be below 2%. Use email address verification methods to reduce the number of both soft (temporary) and hard (permanent) bounces.
Analyze open rates and CTR to understand email effectiveness. Segment your audience and create personalized campaigns that correspond to subscriber interests.
Don't ignore unsubscribes. Analyze the reasons to improve your content and adjust the frequency. Offer subscribers ways to manage their preferences, like receiving emails less often or choosing specific topics.

In email marketing, a sender's score is like a dossier that tracks their actions and how subscribers react. This rating is influenced by various factors, including spam complaints, bounce rates, and click-through rates. The weight of each metric and the specific formulas used to calculate the rating depend on the type of messages sent.

A sender score is constantly evolving, influenced by every email campaign. Sender identification is based on the IP address and domain. The rating is the sum of the domain's reputation and the reputations of all IP addresses used for email campaigns.

Don't assume that switching IP addresses will reset your reputation. Email services maintain sending history. If suspicious messages start originating from a new IP and domain, your identity will be quickly revealed.

Conclusion: Prioritize building a strong reputation from the outset by adhering to ethical email marketing practices. A good sender score ensures that your emails land in inboxes, not spam folders.

IP Reputation and Domain Reputation

In email marketing, a sender's score is made up of two parts: the reputation of the IP address and the reputation of the domain. Let's find out what these two concepts mean.

IP Address Reputation

Email services use IP address pools to send emails. Most of them are shared. You can also purchase a dedicated IP address, but it's much more expensive.

Each IP address has its own reputation, which tells email servers whether to trust emails from that source. Email servers take this seriously: most undelivered emails are the result of a bad IP address reputation.

This reputation doesn't appear instantly and isn't built in a day. A good rating is earned over years but it can be ruined by one unsuccessful email campaign.

Domain Reputation

Even a reliable IP address from the best service won't help if your domain is known as a spam sender.

Conversely, an excellent sending history from your domain doesn't guarantee success if the IP has a poor reputation. This is particularly relevant for free Gmail or Outlook accounts, which are often used for spam. Sending large volumes of emails requires more robust solutions.

How to Check Your Sender Score

To ensure email services accurately assess your reputation, email authentication is necessary. It accomplishes three crucial tasks:

Verifies you as the legitimate sender of the emails.
Protects recipients from spam and phishing attempts.
Enhances the reputation of legitimate senders.

Email campaigns without authentication are initially assigned a low rating.

Email services (like Gmail and Yandex) are committed to combating spam. They even offer tools to monitor and improve reputation.

These services provide a dedicated tool called Postmaster. With it, you can:

Track detailed email delivery statistics.
Contact support.

Utilize these tools to ensure your email campaigns land in inboxes. Here are a couple of examples of score tracking services:

1. Gmail Postmaster

Free.
Displays the trust level associated with the domain and IP addresses used for sending emails.
Provides insights into the percentage of emails landing in the spam folder.
Verifies that you have email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) in place to confirm your sending authorization.
Enables prompt resolution of email delivery issues.

2. SenderScore

Free.
Analyzes the domain used for sending emails to identify potential reputation issues.
Checks the SSL certificate that verifies your website's authenticity, which also impacts trust.

How to Improve Your Sender Score

Here are a few tips to increase your sender rating.

Firstly, ensure that email servers trust you. To do this, implement domain authentication. Those complex acronyms like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are simply tools that safeguard user inboxes from spammers and phishers.

The second important point is your subscriber base. Don't buy ready-made lists and don't add people without their consent. Use a double opt-in to ensure people genuinely want your emails. Be honest and transparent about why they're added to your list. Don't deceive people. Otherwise, recipients will simply unsubscribe or complain about spam.

Remember to regularly clean your subscriber list. People change jobs and abandon old email addresses. Sending emails to these addresses can negatively impact your reputation. Remove inactive addresses and those who never read your emails. They may have lost interest, and your messages may be going straight to spam. Consider re-engaging them with a special campaign. If nothing works, remove them from your list.

Finally, remember the importance of engaging your subscribers. Interesting topics, captivating subject lines, and well-designed emails — that's the secret to getting users to read your messages and interact with them.

How to RUIN Your Sender Score

Do you want your emails to be ignored, marked as spam, and never reach inboxes? Here are a few tips to help you in this difficult task.

1. Forget about a double opt-in. Subscription confirmation is a waste of resources. It's significantly easier to purchase a ready-made email address list, as it will guarantee that all subscribers are "loyal" and there are no spam traps.

2. Reactivation is not necessary. Your subscribers are sure to be eagerly awaiting your next email, even if several years have passed since the last message. Skip the extra step of asking them to confirm their subscription.

3. Don't clean your list. Let it grow, accumulate inactive addresses, and those who mark your emails as spam.

4. Don't worry if your subscribers haven't been active in a while. Let your inactive users rejoice in your attention.

5. Remember, email providers generally don't pay attention to the frequency of your email sends. The more frequent, the better — this way you'll definitely keep your brand top of mind. But don't forget to take occasional long breaks.

6. Experiment with content. One day emails might be blue, the next yellow, and who knows, maybe just use a photo collage the day after. Keep your subscribers guessing.

7. Make it hard for people to unsubscribe. Remove the unsubscribe button or make it as inconspicuous as possible.

8. Don't waste time creating useful content. Promotional messages with eye-catching headlines and dubious offers are the key to success.

9. Turn your emails into beautiful pictures. The less text, the better.

10. Use other people's layout and visual style. Take old messages from partners, even if they have already been sent to other databases.

11. Be frugal. Use free email providers. Why spend money on your own domain when you can send from dubious services?

12. Aim for a message size over 119 KB. Let your emails load slowly and look terrible on mobile devices. The most important thing is to deliver them at all costs.

Your Email Sender Reputation is Declining. What Can You Do?

Analyze your actions.

1. Review your recent email campaigns.

Did you upload any new email lists? If so, where did you get them from?
Did you change the topic of any of your emails?
Have there been any other significant changes to your email campaigns?

2. Review your postmaster reports.

Compare your recent email campaigns.

Look for:

Spam complaints.
A sudden increase in unsubscribes.
A decrease in deliverability and open rates.

3. Identify the differences between the "bad" email campaign and your other campaigns.

Compare it to others. See if the subject line is too aggressive/misleading. Make sure there are no errors in the content.

4. Address the issues.

Clean up your subscriber list.
Rewrite your emails.
Improve your subject lines.

5. Contact support.

If you can't identify the cause on your own, describe the problem and provide data.

Conclusion

A sender score is a crucial metric in email marketing that directly impacts the deliverability of your emails. It's influenced by various factors, including the quality of your subscriber list, email content, and sending frequency.

A strong sender reputation ensures that more of your emails land in recipients' inboxes. Regularly monitor your reputation, analyze campaign results, and address any issues promptly. Remember, maintaining the trust of email providers is essential for ensuring your messages reach their intended audience.