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What You'll Learn
Think of your email sending reputation as your credit score. Just as banks decide whether to trust you with money, Providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo decide whether to trust your emails. A good reputation means smooth inbox delivery. A bad one? Your emails might be blocked or lost in spam.
📖 Reputation & Sender Score (Why ISPs Trust or Block You)
Lesson 7
2 min read
Interactive
1. What is Email Reputation?
Reputation is how much ISPs trust you as a sender.
It’s built over time, based on:
- Your sending history
- Your domain and IP address behavior
- How recipients react to your messages
2. Sender Score (The “Credit Score” of Email)
- Developed by companies like Validity
- Score ranges 0–100
- Higher = better trust with ISPs
- Factors that affect sender score:
- Complaint rate (spam reports)
- Bounce rate (invalid emails)
- Spam trap hits
- Volume consistency (not blasting suddenly)
- Engagement (opens, clicks, replies)
3. Key Types of Reputation
A. Domain Reputation
- Tied to your domain (e.g., inboxsensei.com)
- Lasts longer than IP reputation
- Becomes critical as ISPs move to domain-based tracking
B. IP Reputation
- Based on the server sending your emails
- Important if you’re on a dedicated IP
- Shared IPs can be risky if others behave badly
4. How ISPs Use Reputation
When your email reaches Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo:
- ISP checks if the sender is authenticated (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
- ISP looks at your reputation score (domain + IP).
- ISP checks past user engagement.
- ISP decides: Deliver to inbox/Deliver to spam/Block completely
5. Improving Your Reputation
- Warm up new domains and IPs slowly
- Keep bounce rates below 2%
- Keep complaint rates below 0.1%
- Remove inactive subscribers regularly
- Send consistent volumes (avoid sudden spikes)
- Encourage replies and engagement
6. Real-World Example
- A SaaS company buys a cold email list and blasts 50,000 emails.
- High bounce rate
- Many spam complaints
- Reputation crashes → emails blocked everywhere
- Later, the same company builds a permission-based list and gradually increases sending.
- Low complaints, high engagement
- Reputation improves → inbox placement restored
🥋 Sensei Tip:
Your email reputation follows you everywhere—just like your personal credit score. Treat your domain with care, or you’ll end up with a “bad credit history” that’s hard to erase.
⏱️ Est. reading time: 2 minutes
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