Sender reputation
Your sender reputation determines your trustworthiness on the internet. It determines how email clients view your IP address, which influences their decision to accept or reject your email. There are several factors which influence your reputation, which is why it is important to manage your database effectively, send good content and keep your users engaged. We will now describe some factors and give some tips on improving your reputation.
Influencing factors
There are several factors influencing your reputation. Follow the tips below to use them to your advantage!
Database
Your database (probably) contains a lot of information. Your profile data often comes from the users themselves, but not all users provide useful and correct information. If an email bounces or is marked as spam this is bad for your reputation. Therefore it is important to manage your database well.
Bounce handling
Bounce handling is another very important topic. If an email is misspelled or does not exist at all it is harmful to your reputation to leave it in your database. With Copernica you can automatically process bounces to prevent this from happening.
Certification
Through Copernica you can enter a request to be a certified sender. If you satisfy the requirements Return Path, a company specialized in email reputation, will check you and give you the certificate. With Return Path Sender Certification you will be placed on the best whitelists, improving your reputation with email clients. It also improves the chances of your images being displayed and your links being activated.
Pic-server
A pic-server domain is used to track clicks and opens, for example. Copernica offers some default pic-server domains, but sadly there are also Copernica users sending spammy mails that harm their reputation.
Luckily, you can set up your own pic-register domain easily. Most people create a subdomain under their company domain (e.g., newsletter.companydomain.com). Point the (sub)domain to track.copenrica.net using a CNAME. Then go to the delivery settings of your account and enter your own domain at the pic-register settings, replacing the old one.
Email content
Spamscore
Every email receives a spam score, which is also important to your reputation. Tips to lower your spam score include adding a text version, avoiding 'spammy' words and keeping your HTML clean. See the article on lowering your spam score for more tips and explanations.
Relevance
Make sure your email is also relevant. Using personalization is one way to make your emails more relevant. If your users are interested in your emails they are less likely to report them as spam.
Unsubscribe link
Users should always (by law) be able to unsubscribe. By adding an unsubscribe link to each mail you give them the opportunity to opt out of your newsletter, making them less likely to report your email as spam. You can also set the unsubscribe behaviour yourself. After you've set this behaviour you can make a newsletter selection to only email those who want to receive your mail.
To ensure that all of your subscribers want to receive your emails and are using a valid email address you can create a double opt-in.
Viewing
Make sure your email looks nice and readable in every environment with Litmus previews. If an email is not readable it could be marked as spam by the user.