Email reputation checks help enhance the deliverability of your outreach by ensuring your account meets the standards required by email service providers.
But why does it matter?
This article explores email reputation, how it impacts deliverability, why you should incorporate reputation checks in your routine, and our suggestions for the best tools to improve deliverability.
What is Email Reputation?
Email service providers, such as Gmail, iCloud, and Outlook, use complex algorithms to monitor and evaluate the credibility and trustworthiness of your email account’s IP and domain.
The score they assign to your account is your email reputation, sometimes called sender reputation. This is the most critical factor in determining whether emails end up in the recipient's mailbox or their spam folder.
The Impact of Email Reputation
A low reputation score harms your emails' deliverability and increases the risk of them being classified as spam, malicious, or fraudulent. This results in emails getting filtered into spam and junk folders, leading to more significant issues, such as damage to your brand image and lost revenue. In the worst-case scenario, a low score can completely block your outreach and put you on a service provider's blacklist.
Aspects that can hinder your sender reputation include:
- Poor Authentication: Email providers struggle to verify authenticity without properly configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. SPF specifies which servers are permitted to send emails on your behalf, DKIM is a digital signature to verify authenticity, and DMARC is the framework for providers handling emails that fail to provide adequate authentication. Poor authentication can lead to suspicions regarding your email intent and spam reports that could hurt your deliverability.
- Spammy Content: Emails containing typical spam mail characteristics, such as excessive capital letters, links, or use of flagged keywords, result in your outreach getting marked as spam.
- Low Engagement: Low open and click-through rates signify low levels of engagement, which suggests that recipients do not want your emails and reduces the rate at which they receive them.
- Poor Sending Practices: Sending too many emails in a short time, using invalid email addresses, or purchasing email lists can harm your deliverability. High email volume in a short period may trigger spam filters, raising concerns about your email’s authenticity and damaging your sender reputation.
- Blacklisting: Blacklists are databases owned by email service providers that consist of IP addresses and domain names that have been marked as notorious for spam or malicious activity. This marks the sender account as unreliable and results in outgoing mail getting filtered into spam boxes or blocked from being sent altogether.
On the other hand, a high sender reputation score must be built over time. It indicates that your email server or domain is credible and trustworthy. This increases the likelihood that your emails will be delivered to primary inboxes, resulting in an improved brand image and engagement rate.
The factors that contribute to a high reputation score include:
- Low Spam Complaint Rate: Fewer people marking your emails as spam lets your recipient's email platform know your emails are wanted and accepted.
- Consistent Sending Practices: Sending a regular volume of emails over a period of time helps build your reputation. This shows reputation algorithms that you are more thoughtful in your outreach, increasing credibility.
- High Engagement Rate: High open and click-through rates show providers that your content is relevant and engaging. This aspect significantly boosts your sender reputation because recipients consider your outreach more meaningful.
- Clean and Organized Email Lists: Removing inactive and low-reputation accounts helps keep your recipient list updated to reduce your bounce rate. It also helps service providers verify that you are not engaging with other low-reputation accounts, which could positively impact your reputation score. An organized list also helps you focus on your target audience to reduce the rate of unnecessary outgoing content.
- Relevant and Valuable Content: Besides reducing spammy content, creating meaningful content benefits your sender reputation. It’s a double-edged sword that boosts your reputation in two ways. Platform algorithms assess and rate your email content to determine its value, with more personalized emails ranking higher. It also helps boost engagement among your recipients.
- Proper Email Structure: Service providers heavily consider account authenticity when determining your score. This aspect proves you are who you represent yourself as to prevent spoofing and phishing scams. The assessed factors include SPF, DKIM, and DMARC indicators used to keep authenticity data.
Why Reputation Checks Should be Part of Your Email Campaign Routine
Using SaaS tools to perform routine reputation checks is essential for bringing awareness to any issues affecting your emails' deliverability.
Maintaining the effectiveness of your email campaign relies on ensuring your messages reach your recipient's inbox. To achieve this, an ideal email platform should include the following features:
- Proactive Issue Detection: Early issue detection brings attention to problems before they cause significant damage so you can address them quickly. This can be presented in features like high bounce rate notifications.
- Targeted Improvements and Increased Deliverability: The best email tools will identify weaknesses in your email-sending practices, such as content quality, sending volume, and contact organization, to ensure your email ends up in your contact's mailbox. Effective use of these tools helps make the necessary adjustments to enhance your outreach strategy.
- Reduced Spam Complaints: Reputation tools indicate the relevance level of your email content to notify you of the likelihood that it will fail a spam assessment. The right tool offers features that allow you to automate content personalization procedures to easily tailor content for your recipients. This significantly reduces the likelihood that provider algorithms classify it as spam.
- Avoided Blacklisting: Being aware of the aspects that negatively impact your reputation is essential to prevent being put on a blacklist. Regular reports inform you of any potential concerns that can put you on a blacklist and notify you if you do end up on a blacklist.
- Data-Driven Strategy: Proper reputation tools utilize AI-driven data analytics to provide you with valuable information to guide the approach to your email campaign. AI technology is essential for streamlining data analytics due to its capability to handle large volumes of data. This increases efficiency by reducing the labor of finding relevant data to use.
- Increased Return on Investment: Considering these factors helps boost your email reputation and delivery, resulting in greater engagement and increased conversions.
The Best Email Reputation Building Platforms
Instantly Warmup
G2 Rating: 4.8/5 ⭐ from 3,560 reviews
Instantly aims to simplify reputation-building with features that address crucial aspects of your email campaign in one user-friendly platform. In addition to your reputation score, its ease of use allows you to keep track of relevant data such as the number of warmup emails sent, delivered, saved from spam, and engaged with.
Their deliverability network connects you with over 1 million real email accounts to help service providers verify the authenticity of your email account, further boosting your reputation score.
Instantly uses AI to help gather, manage, and process data to help you gain the most valuable information when strategizing your campaign. Its email warmup automation helps ensure you’re sending emails at a consistent pace to avoid getting flagged by email platform algorithms. AI can also help automate follow-up and personalize emails to reduce potential spam reports.
Instantly has your budget in mind with a wide selection of subscription plans and special offers.
Improve your sender reputation with a free trial today!
Top Features
- Customizable, automated warmup and follow-up techniques to regularize the rate of outgoing mail
- Visually appealing, user-friendly interface to efficiently access outreach management functions and key data insights
- Effortless connection with social media platforms with 1-click integration
- Fast deliverability network with over 1 million real accounts in its email pool
- AI-assisted personalization tools to help tailor email content to your recipient while eliminating issues that could affect bounce rate.
- Advanced data analytic features to collect, manage, process, and present data in a captivating, understandable way
- A private network of headless browsers to guarantee a secure and effective deliverability boost
- Various affordable payment plans to fit your specific budget and campaign needs
Pricing
Instantly offers a variety of payment structures to help tailor costs to your budget. Below is a list of the monthly plans they offer.
- Growth: $37/month
- Hypergrowth: $97/month
- Light Speed: $358/month
- Enterprise: Custom Pricing
Netcore Cloud
G2 Rating: 4.4/5 ⭐ with 636 reviews
Netcore aims to enhance your reputation score by offering features that emphasize personalizing your email content. They utilize AI to help you target people interested in your product and tailor your email campaign to increase conversions.
They offer features that make optimizing your website and managing your email campaign cohesive. They streamline outreach by using AI to collect data from their websites to generate leads. You can then use the collected data to guide the AI content generation process to boost personalization.
Top Features
- Website optimization to create personalized customer experiences and cater to your email campaign needs
- Website data analytics to gather valuable data such as contact information and web behavior
- AI-driven personalization for both website and email content
- API support for more customization options
Pricing
- Startup is their basic plan featuring campaign automation, data analytics, and integration with eCommerce platforms
- Growth is their mid-range plan and comes with website personalization and integration with social media channels
- Enterprise is their complete package, offering the most customization for both website and email content
Twilio SendGrid
G2 Rating: 4.0/5 ⭐ with 354 reviews
SendGrid Email API enhances email campaigns by allowing you to create, send, and manage emails at scale. It utilizes RESTful APIs and SMTP relays to enhance customization. It also offers support options for various other programming languages and frameworks.
SendGrid provides personalization and deliverability features such as dynamic templates, real time email validation, and valuable data insights. These data insights provide crucial information such as sending, deliverability, and engagement rates.
Top Features
- SMTP Service for security and reliability at a scale
- API support for operative customization
- Email address validation to boost deliverability rates
- Deliverability insights to help you strategize your email campaign
- Dynamic templates to enhance content personalization
Pricing
- Free: $0.00/month — 100 emails/day
- Essentials: Starting at $19.95/month — Send 50,000 to 100,000 emails/month
- Pro: Starting at $89.95/month — Send 100,000 to 2.5 million emails/month
- Premier: Custom pricing to pay for what you need
Test out their features and send up to 100 emails daily at no cost with their trial package.
Key Takeaways
Email reputation is a crucial factor for ensuring the deliverability of your outreach. If you are short on time, here are the key takeaways from this article.
- Your email reputation is the trust and reliability score associated with your email accounts
- Email service providers use specialized algorithms to assess your account and assign a reputation rating
- The aspects they assess include bounce, engagement, and spam complaint rate, sending practices, contact list authenticity and organization, and content quality
- A low reputation score negatively impacts deliverability by increasing the likelihood that an email will bounce or end up in the spam box. In severe cases, a low score can put you on a blacklist, effectively blocking you from sending out emails
- A high reputation positively influences your deliverability by indicating a strong sense of trust, authenticity, and relevance for your account
- Routinely monitoring your reputation benefits your outreach campaign by offering value to crucial aspects such as proactive issue detection, targeted improvements, reduced Spam Complaints, avoided Blacklisting, data-driven Strategy, and increased ROI.
Find out how Instantly can help optimize your outreach efforts with a free trial today!
