What is a Sender Score and How to Improve It
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.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
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.
Your Email Sender Reputation is Declining. What Can You Do?
Analyze your actions.
- 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?
Compare your recent email campaigns.
Look for:
- Spam complaints.
- A sudden increase in unsubscribes.
- A decrease in deliverability and open rates.
Compare it to others. See if the subject line is too aggressive/misleading. Make sure there are no errors in the content.
- Clean up your subscriber list.
- Rewrite your emails.
- Improve your subject lines.
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.
