Email Sender Reputation

According to Return Path’s 2018 benchmark report on the state of email reputation (via Marketing Charts):

• 36% of the messages analyzed were sent by the most reputable senders, being those with a Sender Score above 90.
• Senders with a score above 90 (91-100) had an average delivered rate last year of 91%, meaning that 91% of their messages were not bounced or rejected by mailbox providers’ gateway filters.

Several signals figure into Return Path’s Sender Score calculations, including: 

1. Complaint Rate: Measures the degree to which recipients mark emails as spam. 
2. Unknown User Rate: These are email addresses that have never existed, have been closed by the email provider, or have been abandoned by the user. A high percentage of these emails on a given email list are indicitive of a low-quality list. 
3. Spam Traps: These are email addresses used to identify spammers and poor data quality practices. 

Email Domain Reputation

Another important factor in email reputation is the reputation of the domain name of the email itself. 

A domain name that has existed for many years is likely to have a stronger reputation signal for the email sent with it than a domain name that has been newly created. 

Additionally, a domain name that has changed ownership several times is likely to have a weaker reputational signal than a domain that has never changed hands. 

Email Engagement Signals

Common engagement signals you should also consider that can help build email reputation include:

4. Open Rate: The frequency with which your subscribers open the emails you send them. 
5. Latency Rate: The immediacy with which your subscribers open your emails. 
6. Click-Through Rate: The degree to which your suscribers click on the links in your emails. 
7. Loyalty: The degree to which individual subscribers consistently open and engage with your emails. 
8. Forward Rate: The frequency with which subscribers forward your emails to non-subscribers, the volume of non-subscribers they forward to, and the degree to which those non-subscribers become subscribers. 
9. Social Sharing Rate: The degree to which subscribers share a link to the web version of an email to a social media site, when that sharing option is available. 

Cover image courtesy Andy Rennie.