What is domain reputation?
Domain reputation refers to how email service providers (ESPs) assess the trustworthiness of the domain you use to send emails. Think of it as a credit score for your email campaigns—domains with higher reputations are more likely to land emails in recipients’ inboxes, while domains with poor reputations are more prone to being blocked or marked as spam.
Several factors influence domain reputation, including:
- Sending behavior: Frequent sending to invalid or inactive addresses can harm your reputation.
- Spam complaints: If too many recipients mark your emails as spam, your reputation will decline.
- Engagement rates: Low open or click-through rates signal poor email relevance to ESPs.
- Spam traps: Accidentally sending emails to spam traps—decoy email addresses used by ESPs—can negatively affect reputation.
- Hard bounce: Emails that permanently fail to deliver due to invalid or deactivated email addresses. Frequent hard bounces signal poor list management, harming your domain reputation.
Monitoring domain reputation is essential to maintaining high deliverability rates. Tools like Google Postmaster Tools, Talos Intelligence, and MXToolbox provide insights into your domain’s performance and any blacklist issues that may impact your outreach efforts.
For a healthy domain reputation, it’s important to follow best practices such as email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), list hygiene, and maintaining proper email cadence to avoid overwhelming recipients. Rebuilding a damaged reputation can take several weeks to months, so staying proactive in monitoring and addressing issues early is crucial.
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