Key Concepts: Sender Reputation

When you engage in adult email marketing, the domains you use (as well as any associated IP addresses) will develop a sender reputation score that’s assigned by the ISPs. This score is directly influenced by your actions — and the actions of the people who receive your emails. Think of it like a credit score.

Your sender reputation score is handled differently by the various webmail providers (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc), and in some cases (like Gmail) the only way you’ll know when your reputation is bad is through poor email delivery results.

Note that if you’re using multiple domains for sending your email campaigns, each will have its own sender reputation. This is also true when you use multiple IPs, however bad behavior can result in entire ranges of IP addresses getting damaged.

Like credit, your sender reputation can fall into one of three buckets

In general, email senders have either a positive, negative or new sender reputation.

New Senders

This is like having no credit at all. When you’re in this category, banks are hesitant to lend you a lot of money because they don’t know you. It’s the same idea with email, until you have built up a history as a sender the webmail providers will be hesitant to deliver a large number of emails from you from fear you might be a spammer.

The good news is it doesn’t take long to get out of this category, but where you go from here depends on what you do with your email campaigns.

Good Senders

This is obviously where you want to be. When you’ve built up a good reputation, more of your emails will get delivered. And more of those that are delivered will end up in the inbox instead of the spam box. A good reputation is vital for getting the best results from email marketing.

Bad Senders

This is where you’ll go if a webmail provider believes you’re not sending emails based on best practices. If you’re using bought lists, scraping emails off the internet, or making any number of common email marketing mistakes that result in your emails being deemed unwanted, your reputation will take a dive.

What influences your sender score?

• – The volume of emails you send.
  
• – How long you have been sending emails.
  
• – The percentage of people who open your emails.
  
• – The percentage of people who report your emails as spam.
  
• – The percentage of people who click links in your emails.
  
• – How often your emails are sent to spam traps.
  
• – Your sending IPs being included on blacklists.
  
• – The percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from your email lists.
  
• – The percentage of your emails that are ‘bounced’ by the recipient’s ISP. Bounces can be hard (permanent failure) or soft (temporary failure).
  
• – Patterns that indicate you’re using a bought email list.
  

What happens if my sender reputation is poor?

The quick answer is: fewer of your emails will get delivered. Depending on how low your reputation goes, your emails could end up in the spam box or just not delivered at all.

What should I do if I have a poor sender reputation?

The first thing you’ll want to do is start using best practices for your email marketing campaigns. Unfortunately a damaged reputation can often take months to repair. Research best practices immediately, stand implementing them in your future sends, and then keep sending.

More reading about this topic

Buying email lists: why this is always a bad idea

Best practices with adult email marketing

Help with reputational issues

This is a shameless plus, but if you’re having problems with managing your own sender reputation, you’re willing to use best practices and you want some help, take a look at YNOT Mail. You can also take a look at Return Path from Validity if you have the budget.

These Key Concepts pages are part of our YNOT Adult Affiliate Marketing Guide and provide you with a quick explanation (in plain English) of the basic concepts you’ll need to master in order to become an effective adult affiliate marketer. To learn more about these topics, click through to our in-depth guides linked under the ‘More reading…’ header above.