Email Reputation
Email reputation (or sender reputation) is a score assigned to your sending domain and IP address by email providers, reflecting how trustworthy your emails are.
What Is Email Reputation?
Your email reputation is like a credit score for email sending. ISPs track metrics like bounce rates, spam complaint rates, engagement levels, and spam trap hits to calculate a reputation score. A high reputation means your emails are likely to reach the inbox; a low reputation means they'll be filtered to spam or blocked entirely. Reputation is tracked at both the IP level and the domain level. Domain reputation has become increasingly important as shared IP pools have become more common. Building a good reputation takes time and consistent good behaviour; damaging it can happen quickly with a single bad send.
Why It Matters for Newsletters
Your sender reputation is the single biggest factor determining whether your newsletters reach subscribers' inboxes. A poor reputation affects every email you send — not just the problematic ones. It can take weeks or months to recover from reputation damage, during which your open rates, engagement, and growth will all suffer.
Best Practices
- Keep spam complaint rates below 0.1% (1 complaint per 1,000 emails)
- Maintain bounce rates below 2%
- Send to engaged subscribers regularly — gaps in sending can reduce reputation
- Monitor your reputation using Google Postmaster Tools
- Remove consistently unengaged subscribers to improve overall engagement metrics
How Aldus Handles This
Aldus protects your sender reputation through automatic bounce handling, list hygiene, and engagement-based re-engagement campaigns. The platform monitors key reputation metrics and alerts you if any issues arise.