Take the guesswork out of email deliverability

There are a few free tools to check if your sender reputation is in the green. Our favorite is Sender Score. It works like an email credit score to help you assess where you are today and where there’s room for improvement. Any legitimate, permission-based senders should aim for a Score of 100.

Monitoring email deliverability is crucial for email marketers to ensure their messages are reaching subscribers’ inboxes. Here are some key metrics you should track to monitor email deliverability effectively:

1. Inbox placement rate (IPR) is the percentage of successfully delivered emails that reach the inbox instead of spam. It’s a critical metric that isn’t surfaced by traditional ESPs.
2. Delivery rate tells you whether or not your emails were received by the servers of your subscribers’ mailbox providers. This metric does not reveal if these messages were delivered to the inbox or the spam folder.
3. Bounce rate measures the percentage of emails that were not delivered successfully due to various reasons, including invalid email addresses, full mailboxes, or server issues. There are two categories of bounces: hard bounces (permanent delivery failures) and soft bounces (temporary delivery failures).
4. Click-through rate (CTR) indicates the percentage of recipients who clicked on your email out of the total number of emails delivered successfully. While CTR rate doesn’t directly measure deliverability, it reflects email engagement, which can impact email deliverability.
5. Spam complaint rate measures the percentage of recipients who marked your emails as spam or junk. High spam complaint rates can negatively impact your sender reputation and email deliverability.

By tracking these key metrics and analyzing trends over time, you can identify areas for improvement and enhance your overall email deliverability.

Avoiding spam traps is crucial for maintaining a good sender reputation and ensuring high email deliverability rates. Here are some ways to help you avoid spam traps:

1. Use permission-based lists: Only send to subscribers who have explicitly opted in to receive communications from you. Do not use purchased or rented lists, as they often contain outdated or invalid email addresses that have been converted to spam traps.
2. Maintain list hygiene: Implement a strict email re-engagement and suppression policy to avoid sending to old, inactive addresses, while taking proactive measures like email validation to combat data decay, identify problematic, undeliverable addresses, and protect your sender reputation—especially during a re-engagement initiative or key campaign.
3. Verify email addresses: Implement a double opt-in process (DOI) where subscribers must confirm their email addresses after subscribing to your emails. This helps ensure that email addresses are valid and owned by real individuals, reducing the likelihood of hitting spam traps. You can also implement a solution providing real-time contact verification to identify invalid addresses at the point of capture.
4. Follow email best practices: Adhere to email best practices, like using accurate subject lines and including a visible unsubscribe link in your emails as well as a one-click unsubscribe header. Comply with anti-spam laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR to maintain trust and credibility with subscribers and mailbox providers (MBPs).

Getting off a blocklist can be a challenging but necessary process to restore your email deliverability and sender reputation. Here are some steps you can take to get off a blocklist:

1. Identify the blocklist: Determine which blocklist you have been listed on using online tools like Sender Score’s Blocklist Lookup tool.
2. Investigate the reason for listing: Once you’ve identified the blocklist, investigate the reason why your IP address or domain was listed. Common reasons for listing include a high volume of spam complaints, poor email authentication practices, or compromised email accounts.
3. Request removal: Most blocklists provide a process for requesting removal. Visit the website of the blocklist that listed your IP address or domain and follow their instructions for removal. You may need to provide information such as your IP address, domain name, and details about the actions you’ve taken to resolve the issue.
4. Monitor your reputation: After requesting removal, monitor your email deliverability and sender reputation closely. Keep an eye on bounce rates, spam complaints, and other deliverability metrics to ensure that your emails are reaching recipients’ inboxes.
5. Implement email authentication: Implement email authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to protect your sender reputation. Proper authentication helps verify the legitimacy of your emails and reduces the risk of being listed on blocklists.
6. Be patient: Getting off a blocklist may take time, and it may require multiple attempts to request removal. Be patient and persistent in your efforts to resolve the issue and restore your sender reputation.

By following these steps and addressing the underlying issues that led to the listing, you can improve your chances of getting off a blocklist and restoring your email deliverability and sender reputation.