How Email Domain Reputation Is Determined
email domain reputation lookup is a key component of email deliverability. It’s important to understand how it’s determined and keep a close eye on it, especially when managing email campaigns that target new recipients. There are a lot of factors that influence email domain reputation, including IP addresses and sender domain name, return-path domains, and DNS-based domains like DKIM signatures.
Building Trust Online: Enhancing Your Domain Reputation
Mailbox providers are often secretive about the algorithms they use to determine email domain reputation scores, because giving away too much information would allow scammers to game the system and bypass spam filters. However, we know that they look at several different elements, including IP reputation, sending patterns and history, and how often emails are marked as spam. They also look at the types of links and headers included in your emails.
A common way to check the reputation of a domain is to use an online tool such as MxLookupOnline or MxToolbox, and type in the full qualified domain name to get results. Another option is to use an IP reputation lookup tool such as Barracuda Reputation Lookup, which provides a real-time database of IP addresses and domains that have a bad reputation. You can also use tools like Talos Intelligence, provided by Cisco, to run a reputation scan on your email address or domain and see how it’s doing.
If you have a new domain, it may take some time to build up a good reputation score. It’s best to start by warming up the domain and slowly building trust with mailbox providers. This can be done by testing the domain with a few campaigns, and by removing subscribers who have unsubscribed from your list. It’s also helpful to monitor hard and soft bounce rates, as well as spam complaints, to ensure you are delivering valuable content to your audience.