Reputation Matters: Sender Score Critical To Email Deliverability

More than half of all emails are labeled as spam, blocked by inbox providers and fail to reach their intended recipients, according to a new study released Tuesday by Return Path.

A reputable sender score is essential to email deliverability, and in fact, as much as 90% of delivered emails derive from a sender with a qualified and verified reputation, according to Return Path’s study of over 4 trillion emails.

The email and data solutions provider evaluated the effect of a sender score, or reputation, on email marketing by using data from Sender Score and Return Path’s Reputation Network.

Ranging from 0 to 100, a sender score is a metric that ISPs leverage to verify the authenticity and safety of email marketing messages sent from any particular IP address. A sender score helps filter email, and the score acts as a proxy to give guidance across mailbox providers.

Fifty-six percent of all sent email is blocked by mailbox providers before it reaches consumers’ inboxes, and 52% of those messages are sent from a IP address with a senders score of 70 or below, according to Return Path’s report.

Reputable marketers reach their intended audiences far more consistently than brands with low sender scores, according to the report -- and marketers with a near-perfect reputation score of 100 only see 2% of their emails blocked or sent to spam. 

This blocked percentage steadily increases as a sender score drops. Marketers with a sender score of 81–90 see an average of 10% of their messages blocked, while marketers who score in the 71-80 range see a quarter of their emails blocked.

A sender score below 70 spells significant trouble for marketers, according to Return Path’s study, and very few emails are actually delivered to a recipient’s inbox.

Return Path’s analysis also correlated a high sender score with low complain rates and cleaner email list hygiene practices. Marketers with a sender score of 71-80 had nearly fourteen times the complain rate of marketers with a senders score of 91-100.

Tom Sather, senior director of research at Return Path, explained the importance of a sender score by comparing it to a consumer credit score in a conversation with Email Marketing Daily.  “Everyone has a credit score, and that credit score really determines if you’re eligible to get a loan from a bank and what that loan will say,” says Sather. “A high senders score is a good indicator your email will be delivered.” 

Sather says that some email providers, such as Comcast and Road Runner in the United States, will even allow marketers with higher senders scores to send more emails over a shorter period of time.

As is the case with a credit report, a sender score of 0 reflects no history at that particular IP address and will spell trouble for marketers. A sender score is generally calculated on a rolling 30-day average, and Sather asserts that consistent volume is key to maintaining a reliable sender score.

“In the case that they have no sending reputation and their score is 0, our recommended course of action is to onboard and ramp up sending volume,” says Sather. “It’s not 0 to 60 overnight, because that looks bad -- puts you on an ISP’s radar and chances are you’ll be blocked and filtered.”  This process can take weeks to months, depending on how clean a marketer’s email list is, so timing is key especially for brands that have peak sales and marketing periods such as the winter holiday season.

Additional metrics that undermine a sender score include spam bots, email list hygiene, subscriber complaints, invalid email addresses and low email engagement.  DMARC is currently not factored into a sender score, says Sather, but he asserts that it can stop a sender score from fluctuating as much. 

“Most people have a score of 71 or above, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can sit back and relax,” says Sather. “Just like a credit score, you need to monitor it.” 

Return Path offers a free service, senderscore.org, for marketers to check their sender score by IP or domain lookup.

 

 

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