IP Reputation

What is IP Reputation?

The IP Reputation of a sender is a comprehensive approach to your IP, encompassing factors like sender actions, email deliveries, reports, and spam complaints. Factors like low open/click rates, spam complaints, and bounces adversely affect the sender’s reputation. Since emails are sent from IP addresses, they are seen as unique identifiers of email streams. An IP address can either be dedicated or shared. Shared IP addresses are such that several companies send their emails using the same IP address.

IP Reputation in email marketing refers to the score or rating given to an IP address based on its sending history and behavior, which can affect email deliverability and inbox placement.

Dedicated IP addresses are preferred by senders with higher email sending volume. Irrespective of your sending volume, most email senders prefer sending their marketing and transactional emails to different IP addresses. Dedicated IPs allow improved control of your IP reputation; after all, the activities of other senders do not affect your sending reputation.  When using a dedicated IP address, ensure the IP is properly warmed up before you send emails to your entire list.

In addition to sender actions, email deliveries, reports, and spam complaints, several other factors can impact the IP reputation of an email sender. Here are some additional factors to consider:

1. Content quality: The email content’s quality and relevance can impact the sender’s IP reputation. Emails that are engaging, valuable, and relevant to the recipient are more likely to be opened, clicked, and engaged with, which can improve the sender’s reputation.
2. List quality: The quality of the email list, including factors such as list hygiene and engagement rates, can also impact the sender’s reputation. Email marketers should regularly clean their email list and remove inactive or invalid email addresses to maintain a high-quality list.
3. Authentication: Proper authentication of email domains and IP addresses can help improve the sender’s reputation and prevent spoofing or phishing attempts. Authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC can help ensure that emails are delivered securely and that recipients can verify the sender’s identity.
4. Engagement metrics: Engagement metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates can also impact the sender’s reputation. High engagement rates indicate that the email content is relevant and valuable to the recipient, which can improve the sender’s reputation.
5. Feedback loops: Feedback loops allow email senders to receive notifications when a recipient marks an email as spam. This can help identify email content or list quality issues and allow email senders to take corrective action to improve the sender’s reputation.

In addition to understanding the factors that impact sender reputation, choosing the right type of IP address for your email-sending needs is important. While shared IP addresses can be more cost-effective, maintaining a positive sender reputation may be more difficult. Dedicated IP addresses can provide greater control over the sender’s reputation but require additional costs and resources to manage properly.

Regardless of the type of IP address used, it is crucial to properly warm up the IP address before sending emails to the entire list. This helps build a positive sender reputation and avoid being flagged as spam. By understanding the factors that impact IP reputation and following best practices, email marketers can improve their sender reputation and maximize their email deliverability rates.

You can learn how to warm up your dedicated email IP address here.

3 Key Aspects of Email Reputation

1. Bounce Rate is the number of messages that are not delivered divided by the number of sent emails.
2. Compliant Rate is the number of recipients who reported your messages as spam divided by the number of delivered emails.
3. Spam Trap Hits is the number of messages delivered to addresses meant for tracing and documenting spam.

Some of your emails may end up in the spam folder or be segmented into tabs if you have a somewhat poor reputation.

Discover more

• Mailbox Provider (MBP)
• Disposable
• Multi-Part MIME
• Complaint Rate
• Whitelist
• Confirmed Opt-In
• MX (Mail eXchanger) Record
• Honeypot Spam Trap