Sender Reputation

Email marketers must establish and maintain a good reputation with Internet Service Providers, Email Service Providers, telecommunications companies, and other infrastructure providers. If these companies decide that you're not complying with email regulations, or you're not honoring recipients' unsubscribe requests, or customers are complaining about your messages, they may decide to block or filter your messages.

In addition, the CAN-SPAM regulations in the United States allow infrastructure providers to pursue legal action against email senders. The infrastructure providers bear much of the cost of transmitting and delivering email messages, so they can sue email senders for the financial loss incurred by sending spam or other fraudulent email messages.

Historically, a marketer's sender reputation is managed at the level of the IP address (in the coming years, the sender domain will likely become increasingly important as well). When delivering an email message, the infrastructure provider will check the sender's IP address to try to find out more about the sender. For example, your sending domain should have a text record for each valid IP address used by the domain. The provider will look at this record (called the Sender Policy Framework or SPF) to see if you really are who you say you are. Therefore, it's important that your IP address is configured correctly, with the necessary infrastructure pieces in place. The Marigold implementation team will perform much of this initial configuration.

When you start sending email messages from a new IP address, you essentially have no reputation. The providers don't know anything about you, so they may impose some initial restrictions. Therefore, new email marketers must go through a process known as IP Warming, where you prove to the providers that you're a valid, legitimate marketer who intends to comply with federal regulations.

As an analogy, think of IP Warming like buying car insurance. When you first get your driver's license, the insurance company doesn't know what kind of driver you are, because you have no driving record. Insurance companies will typically charge new drivers a higher premium. Over time, if you prove that you're a good driver, with no accidents or violations, they'll lower your premiums. Conversely, if you have accidents, or get tickets, then your premiums will go higher.

Similarly, internet providers may initially limit the number of emails they accept at first. If you show that you're complying with email regulations, they'll start accepting more emails from you.  Fortunately, this happens quickly over just a few days.  Conversely, if you don't comply with regulations, or if you generate a lot of spam complaints, then the providers will penalize you quickly. You'll have to work harder over a longer period of time to recover from that initial negative reputation.

The following guidelines should be followed during the IP Warming phase:

  • Focus your Campaigns on your best-known customers (ideally, those who have clicked on an email or opened one in the past thirty days) to reduce the number of bounces or spam complaints. Monitor your Campaign activity closely to ensure that you're seeing a good amount of open and click activity. This signals to providers that your recipients genuinely want to receive your messages.

  • Keep initial volumes low. Sending a large volume of emails from unknown IP addresses will raise red flags with infrastructure providers until they learn more about you. You can gradually increase the sending volume with each subsequent Campaign. Sending daily messages and slowing increasing the volume is the best approach.

  • Ensure that your IP address is properly configured with all necessary infrastructure in place. Cheetah Digital will manage this for you.

  • Avoid repeatedly sending messages to inactive email addresses. Emails that bounce — especially hard bounces — will be flagged in Cheetah Digital and will automatically be suppressed from future Campaigns.

  • Always honor opt-out requests from your recipients. These requests do not negatively impact your reputation. However, If you continue contacting recipients after they opt out, they may become frustrated and report your email as spam, which will significantly harm your sender reputation. Opt-out requests will be flagged in Cheetah Digital and will automatically be suppressed from future Campaigns.

  • Ensure your HTML code is valid and correct.  

  • Ensure that all links in your message content direct to actual websites rather than IP addresses. Links to IP addresses are flagged by providers, as it's a common technique used by fraudulent senders, looking to trick recipients into clicking on a link.

Your Marigold team will help you put together an effective IP Warming strategy. If you have any questions, please speak to your Client Services Representative.