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Just as a consumer’s reputation shapes their interactions with others, a domain’s reputation influences how the Email Service Provider (ESP) treats emails from that domain. Domain reputation directly impacts email deliverability, which is why it’s crucial to understand and manage domain reputation in a healthy manner.
In this article, we will delve into the world of domain reputation, uncovering its significance in the email universe, exploring common reputation issues, and providing strategies to fix and maintain a strong domain reputation.
But before we start fixing domain reputation, we should understand what it means in the email universe.
Email Domain Reputation is a universal metric that defines the trustworthiness of an email domain. Domain reputation is built on a domain’s sending behavior and patterns and dictates how future emails from the domain and IP are treated.
If an Email Service Provider (ESP) perceives your emails as “spam,” your sender reputation will suffer, and future emails will automatically be sent to the spam folder.
Spam refers to any unwanted email. If a customer does not want your email, then your email is spam to them — regardless of how important you think the email might be.
If a significant proportion of your email list does not want your email, the signals they send will reflect the same, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Google will categorize you as a spam sender.
To fix reputation issues, you need to resolve the underlying issues first. While it’s easy to change the domain and IP address without fixing the root cause, this is not a sustainable solution and will harm your new domain or IP reputation similarly.
Think of it like a disease. Imagine a patient affected by dengue. One of the most common symptoms of dengue is fever.
Fixing reputation issues by changing domains and IPs is like trying to cure dengue by switching to different brands of paracetamol. Paracetamol will only keep the fever at bay until its effects last. It won’t cure dengue. The patient will continue to remain unhealthy.
Similarly, changing domains and IPs can fix deliverability concerns for a short period, but your brand’s reputation or mailing behavior will be impacted. Now, let’s look at how one of the most popular ESPs evaluates your domain.
Gmail domain reputation reflects how Gmail “sees” you. This, in turn, is decided based on the emails coming from your domain and how customers react to them over time.
This data comes directly from Gmail. This means:
This is how Gmail perceives you:
Reputation | Perception | Consequence |
Bad | A history of sending an enormously high volume of spam. | Mail coming from this entity will almost always be rejected at SMPT or marked as spam. |
Low | Known to send a considerable volume of spam regularly. | Mail from this sender will likely be marked as spam. |
Medium/Fair | Known to send good mail but has occasionally sent a low volume of spam. | Most emails from this entity will have a fair deliverability rate, except when there’s a notable increase in spam levels. |
High | Has a good track record of a very low spam rate and complies with Gmail’s sender guidelines. | Mail will rarely be marked by the spam filter. |
Domain reputation is influenced by several factors, including:
Customer engagement platforms like MoEngage display your domain reputation information in the dashboard so you can understand your domain’s health and its impact on the performance of your email campaigns. Domain reputation is indicated as High, Medium, Low, or Bad.
You can see the domain reputation on the:
Sending behaviors such as the ones listed below typically result in a low/bad reputation, either as a gradual or sudden drop:
If you suddenly increase the volume of emails you’re sending, ESPs will flag and penalize your domain.
Gmail, like all other Mailbox Providers, rate limits the emails from a new IP and does not accept higher volumes from a new domain or IP.
You need domain warm-up for a good reputation. You can do this by slowly increasing volume limits and acceptance rates. Start by sening highly relevant content to a small batch of engaged customers at a slow pace (low RPM).
If you ignore negative signals from recipients, Gmail and other ESPs will mark your emails as spam to protect other customers from future spam.
IPs and domains tend to cool off after three weeks of inactivity. So they will slowly lose their reputation and ramped-up state. Any inactivity must be followed by a smaller send to the most engaged customers and a gradual volume increase.
If you’re sending the same fixed number of emails over a long period, it shows ESPs that you’re not reading your customers’ engagement signals. This will cause your domain to be penalized because ESPs want domains to keep customer engagement at the forefront of every email campaign.
This one’s also closely tied to signals from end customers. If customers are not interacting with your emails, you need to change something about your strategy. You should either stop reaching out to them or change your sending patterns. If your changed strategy still doesn’t elicit a positive response, you should suppress them permanently.
This violates all the basic rules of list management, and your domain will be heavily penalized if you do this.
Here’s a quick checklist of steps to resolve domain reputation issues based on the most common issues.
In conclusion, managing domain reputation is crucial for ensuring email deliverability and maintaining a healthy sender reputation. It is not enough to change domains or IPs to fix reputation issues, as this is only a temporary solution that can harm your brand’s overall reputation in the long run.
Instead, it is important to address the underlying issues and follow best practices for email setup, sending patterns, compliance, and customer engagement. By taking these steps and continuously monitoring and adjusting your sending behavior, you can improve your domain reputation and enhance the performance of your email campaigns.
Sadikshya is a Email Deliverability geek with almost ten years of experience. She enjoys resolving deliverability issues and finding the optimal balance between marketing goals and best practices. When she isn't working, she's either traveling or planning for next trip.
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