A good sending reputation is important for delivering your emails to the inboxes of your contacts. Of course, you want everyone to receive your emails. We are happy to provide you with several tools to increase the sending reputation of your emails, because the better the sending reputation, the better the deliverability.
In this article, we will answer the following questions:
- What is a sending reputation?
- What is a good sending reputation?
- What is a bad sending reputation?
- How can I improve my sending reputation?
What is a sending reputation?
The sending reputation is essentially a score that the ISP (Internet Service Provider) assigns to the organisation sending the email. This reputation is linked to the domain processed in your sender address (for example, info@mailblue.nl). When you send an email to a contact, the email provider will first scan and check the domain and the email before it reaches the inboxes of your contacts.
With a poor sending reputation, your email will end up in the unwanted inbox/spam folder or may not arrive at all. You will experience this effect with all emails sent from this domain. The sending reputation in email marketing is very important, and you also want to maintain a good sending reputation.
What is a good sending reputation?
A good sending reputation can mainly be measured through the open rate. If your sending reputation is good, you will achieve a high percentage in this regard. An average open rate is between 30% and 50%. If you notice that your open rate is below the average percentage, you can find tips to improve the open rate in this article.
What is a bad sending reputation?
With a bad sending reputation, email providers will block your emails for the recipient. As mentioned earlier, your email will end up in the unwanted mailbox or, in the worst case, may not reach the recipient at all. This is something you definitely want to work on if you want to benefit from your email marketing strategy.
But how do you get a bad sending reputation? This can have various causes, but is mainly due to a high bounce rate. A (too) high number of bounced contacts has a significant impact. You can read more about how to prevent a bounce in this article.
In addition to the number of bounces, there are other factors that have a negative effect on the sending reputation of your domain:
- Mailing to misspelled/incorrect email addresses;
- Approaching purchased contacts;
- Not cleaning up your mailing list;
- Sending campaigns with poor or spam-sensitive quality/content;
- Irregularly sending (too) many campaigns.
How can I improve my sending reputation?
Do you have a poor sending reputation? The first step is to determine exactly where things are going wrong. In the 'Reports' section within your MailBlue account, you can analyse the following data:
- Open rate;
- Number of clicks;
- Bounces;
- Spam complaints;
- Unsubscribes.
After analysing the data, you can start implementing optimisations with the ultimate goal of obtaining and maintaining a strong sending reputation. Want to achieve this? Be sure to read the tips below!
- Only send to lists where contacts have opted in. These contacts have indicated that they want to receive your mailings and will therefore show (more) engagement.
- Clean up your lists by using the Engagement Tagging automations -> Part 1 & 2 Engagement Tagging. This way, you keep your list(s) clean and ensure that you do not send campaigns to, for example, old/inactive addresses. This helps prevent a high bounce rate.
- Check if your spam settings are properly configured.
- Utilise personalised content by, for example, using personalisation tags in the subject line. This will further increase engagement.
As you understand, the sending reputation is crucial when it comes to delivering emails to your contacts' inboxes. Therefore, continue to monitor your results regularly to ensure that your sending reputation remains good.