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As ISPs and webmail services get more sophisticated in how they assess incoming email, your sender reputation plays an ever bigger role in deciding whether your marketing email makes it to the recipient.

Once your campaign is released by the “send” button, your emails face numerous hazards on the way to the inbox. Spend any time in the world of email delivery and you’ll see that your reputation as a sender of emails has a big impact on their success at negotiating these hazards.

The better your reputation, the more emails get delivered.

But what determines your reputation? Are ISPs sharing reputation information? Does a good reputation protect you from one-off delivery mistakes? How does authentication fit into all this?

OK, when the guardians of the world’s email accounts look at your incoming email, we know they use your sender reputation as a top criterion for deciding whether, or not, to deliver your message.

Reputation boils down to four primary metrics. This doesn’t mean other metrics are not in play, but there are four primary metrics most large ISPs use in establishing what your reputation is.

• Spam complaint rate: the percentage of people complaining that a marketers email is Spam.
• Unknown user rate: The percentage of email going to addresses that no longer exist.
• Hitting Spam traps: ISPs often turn unused addresses into Spam traps. Hit these, and there is going to be trouble
• Adhering to published ISP policies in relation to sending rates, open connections and retry periods in order to respect their available resources.

Is reputation tied to your sending IP address or your domain?
At the moment, most ISPs are using IP addresses, but it looks like the market is shifting to an IP/ domain pairing future for reputation. Authentication, particularly DomainKeys and the publishing of SPF records, will help ISPs assign reputations more precisely, by tying this reputation to both sender IP addresses and sender domains.

What about unique or shared IP addresses?
A unique sending IP address range is better for reputation management, provided you do wear that white hat and you’re willing to have that scrutiny put on yourself. For any business responsible for the delivery of high-volume commercial emails then a dedicated IP infrastructure should be there.

For any commercial sender of high volume email, ensuring you do everything legitimately and are as transparent as possible is really the largest risk mitigator for your email program. Ensure you follow authentication standards, ensure all technology implementations are in place and that you have a keen and watchful eye on your email reputation.

More Info
This article will have given you a high-level insight into what Sender Reputation & Deliverability is all about and if you want some more detailed info then take a look at this article - Am I a reputable sender?

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

If your interested in having your own mail server to protect your reputation then give us a call on 0870 41 777 41 - it costs less than you may think!