Domain reputation score is a key factor in how inbox providers and spam filters evaluate your emails and whether they reach the inbox. It’s important to understand how to maintain a good domain reputation score so that you can ensure your email campaigns deliver on their promise of lead-to-customer conversions.
Your domain reputation score is determined by the overall evaluation of your business and website by inbox providers, spam filters, and email service providers (ESPs). In addition, it’s important to note that different inbox providers have different criteria for evaluating a sender. As a result, you could have a good domain reputation with one inbox provider and a poor one with another.
Evaluating Trustworthiness: Domain Reputation Score
One of the most critical elements that determine domain reputation score is your email engagement rate. This is measured through open rates and click rates, with higher engagement rates resulting in a better domain reputation score.
In addition, your domain reputation is also influenced by the behavior of other email senders in your pool of IP addresses. Small companies often use shared IP addresses, which means if other senders are engaging in poor email practices, your domain reputation can take a hit. In some cases, it may be necessary to move to a new IP address pool or ESP to avoid this type of negative domain reputation score impact.
Finally, your domain reputation score can be impacted by how quickly you ramp up your email volume. If you jump from sending a few hundred emails to a few thousand per day, it can look like spammy behavior to ESPs and ISPs. This is why it’s important to slowly ramp up your outgoing email volume over a few weeks.