191. Email Marketing › how it works › getting started Email reputation is the general opinion of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and subscribers towards a sender’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, sending domain, or both. This opinion is a reputation score created by an ISP or a third- party provider. If the sender’s score falls within the ISP’s thresholds, a sender’s messages will be delivered to the inbox. If not, the sender’s emails may arrive in the bulk folder, be quarantined, or be bounced back to the sender. How it works: There are various authentication systems that can impact your reputation score. One of these is the Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Domain Name System (DNS). DKIM associates domain names with individual email addresses, ensuring that each organisation has to take responsibility for the emails sent that are associated with their domain. Basically, DKIM signs out any outbound emails. The DKIM signature is added to the email header and includes an encrypted code. The receiving mail server will then take that DKIM signature and verify it with the DNS system to find the matching DKIM public key. Once it has this key, it can use it to unlock the encrypted code – if the code hasn’t been changed, the email hasn’t been tampered with and can be authenticated and passed into the receiving mail server. Becoming an effective email marketer requires constant list cleansing and hygiene. In fact, most lists shrink by 30% each year due to subscribers changing email addresses. Build a preference centre and send out an email once a year asking subscribers to update their details. Make sure you are diligent about maintaining a current opt-in list to achieve maximum deliverability via reputation. Tips to help your reputation score: • ISPs offer various senders’ authentication standards such as Sender ID, Sender policy framework (SPF), and DomainKeys. Quirk highly recommends the use of these standards. • Remember that a huge but inaccurate and outdated database is far less use to an email marketer than a tightly-maintained, smaller database. Strive to boost your database, but don’t forget to clean as you go. • Ensure email broadcast rates are not too high. • Respond to complaints and unsubscribe requests – if someone requests to be unsubscribed, do so. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll face stiff penalties. • Educate users about white lists. noteAn email white list is a list of contacts that the user deems are acceptable to An email’s reputation score can be checked at www.senderscore.org. receive email from and should not be sent to the Spam is unsolicited bulk email – it means that the recipient never gave trash folder. permission to be sent that email.188