"REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING"

#1: Email Reputation

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1. Email Reputation

As the saying goes, “In business... reputation is everything”. Well this holds true when it comes to email deliverability. Your reputa-tion is key and it’s essential to establish - and maintain - a good email reputation.

These include:

a. Know your “scores”

Just like credit reports in the “real world”, email reputation scores are indicators of how good or bad your email practices are. For example, if your credit score is 400, then there are most likely a lot of issues affecting your credit worthiness that you need to address.

Email Reputation

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REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING

SENDER SCORE BANDS AND AVERAGE DELIVERED

SENDER SCORE AVERAGE DELIVERED

0-6061-7071-8081-9091-100

21%67%68%92%95%

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In email, one of the more popular scoring “agencies” is your “Sender Score”. The scores are based on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is the worst and 100 is the best. Your goal is to have an “A rating” email score, which is over 90.

Anything below that indicates that there is some sort of underlying problem that needs to be addressed and cor-rected.

..................................................................... Email Reputation

sender internet authenticationinboundmail server

reputation data

pass

pass

dns server

inbox

junk email

quarantine

block/delete

sender idframework

(sidf)

spf recordlookup

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b. Authenticate your Email IP Address

Pulbish SPF records (sender policy framework) along with SenderID, Do-mainkeys and DKIM (domain keys identified mail).

You may also wish to separate promotional, newsletter, and transactional communication.

c. Control Complaints

It’s important to pay attention to complaints and adjust your campaigns, sending patterns, and communication style accordingly.

You’ll want to establish feedback loops with all of the ISPs that offer them and then monitor where your complaints are coming from and what types of messages are generating them.

Email Reputation

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CONTROL COMPLAINTS

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d. Avoid Blacklists

Stay off blacklists at all costs. There are a number of email blackslist that can impact your deliverabili-ty, so you want to scan your IP address(es) regularly and ensure they are not winding up on any lists.

NOTE: Not all email blacklists are created equal! There are only a handful of blacklists that really have an impact on your email program.

NOTE: You want to avoid blacklists for both your IPs and YOUR domains.

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KEEP OFF BLACKLISTS

Email Reputation

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keep off

blacklists

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e. Only Send Permission Based Email

Well it may be appealing to purchase a list, borrow a database, or even “scrape” lists of people that should be IDEAL prospects for what you have to offer, DON’T DO IT!

Assuming that you have received permission from all of your subscribers, be sure to re-engage inactive contacts by imple-menting a re-engagement campaign (and eliminate subscribers who have chosen not to engage with you after 6 months max).

Send subscribers only what they’ve “opted in” for! It’s enticing when someone signs up for your 10-part autoresponder edu-cational series to automatically “dump” them into your promo-tional list, but if they didn’t sign up for those types of emails, it’s technically not permission for you to send them.

Include a manage subscriptions page so that contacts can add/remove them-selves from email lists according to their preferences. For example, consider offer-ing a once a week digest (downsell) as an option when someone unsubscribes from your daily newsletter. You may not be able to send them a message every day, but at least you’ll maintain that relationship.

Email Reputation

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