E-Mail Reputation: Your Online Credit Score

There’s so much talk out there about e-mail reputation that it can be hard for marketers to determine how much attention to pay to it and what to care about. The bottom line is that every e-mail sender, including those who do newsletters, has an e-mail reputation–and it dictates whether messages and e-zines reach the inbox, get junked or go missing.

When it comes to reputation, keep one simple rule in mind: YOU control your e-mail reputation. Think of it as your credit score for e-mail – your past and present behaviors factor into your credit rating, and your future behaviors can make it better or worse. The same is true with e-mail.

There are no shortcuts to instantly getting a good reputation–it builds up over time. However, following the best practices that build your reputation isn’t hard, and they are likely what you want to be doing anyway to improve response rates and grow your file with active subscribers.

While there are thousands of data points factoring into your reputation, through Return Path’s reputation service, Sender Score, we see that there are three primary levers that most influence reputation and subsequent delivery:

1. Bounce rates: Too many bounces spell disaster in the eyes of ISPs. Removing bounces might be a hassle, but doing it regularly will have a dramatic effect on your e-mail delivery. ISPs use your unknown user rates and other bounce metrics when deciding whether to let your e-mail through.

2. Blacklist inclusion: E-mail receivers reference blacklists when assessing whether to accept your e-mail. If you’re on the wrong ones, you will get filtered. Find out what blacklists you are on and do everything possible to get removed, and you will dramatically improve your e-mail deliverability.

3. Complaint rates: If you think that your customers clicking on the “This is Spam” button won’t affect your e-mail reputation, you are mistaken. Complaints drive 70 percent of e-mail deliverability issues. By determining your complaint rates and sources, you can begin minimizing your complaint rates at ISPs and increasing your delivery rates.

Be vigilant about your e-mail reputation. Use a service to help you figure out what your reputation is and how to improve it, and then do whatever it takes to keep it pristine. If you don’t know what your reputation is with ISPs, you can find out with free assessments like those offered by my firm and others. It is the one thing you can do right now that will give you actionable data you can use to fix your reputation, get more e-mail delivered, and increase program response.

George Bilbrey is GM of delivery assurance for Return Path