Domain Reputation Management: A Roadmap to Stronger Email Performance

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Just as a consumer’s reputation shapes their interactions with others, a domain’s reputation influences how the Email Service Provider (ESP) treats emails from that domain. Domain reputation directly impacts email deliverability, which is why it’s crucial to understand and manage domain reputation in a healthy manner. 

 In this article, we will delve into the world of domain reputation, uncovering its significance in the email universe, exploring common reputation issues, and providing strategies to fix and maintain a strong domain reputation. 

But before we start fixing domain reputation, we should understand what it means in the email universe. 

What is Email Domain Reputation?

Email Domain Reputation is a universal metric that defines the trustworthiness of an email domain. Domain reputation is built on a domain’s sending behavior and patterns and dictates how future emails from the domain and IP are treated. 

If an Email Service Provider (ESP) perceives your emails as “spam,” your sender reputation will suffer, and future emails will automatically be sent to the spam folder.

What is Spam in Email?

Spam refers to any unwanted email. If a customer does not want your email, then your email is spam to them — regardless of how important you think the email might be.

If a significant proportion of your email list does not want your email, the signals they send will reflect the same, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Google will categorize you as a spam sender. 

To fix reputation issues, you need to resolve the underlying issues first. While it’s easy to change the domain and IP address without fixing the root cause, this is not a sustainable solution and will harm your new domain or IP reputation similarly.

Think of it like a disease. Imagine a patient affected by dengue. One of the most common symptoms of dengue is fever. 

Fixing reputation issues by changing domains and IPs is like trying to cure dengue by switching to different brands of paracetamol. Paracetamol will only keep the fever at bay until its effects last. It won’t cure dengue. The patient will continue to remain unhealthy.

Similarly, changing domains and IPs can fix deliverability concerns for a short period, but your brand’s reputation or mailing behavior will be impacted. Now, let’s look at how one of the most popular ESPs evaluates your domain.

What Is Gmail Domain Reputation?

Gmail domain reputation reflects how Gmail “sees” you. This, in turn, is decided based on the emails coming from your domain and how customers react to them over time.

This data comes directly from Gmail. This means:

1. It’s accurate for Gmail customers.
2. It does not apply to other ISPs.

This is how Gmail perceives you:

How is Domain Reputation Influenced?

Domain reputation is influenced by several factors, including:

1. Email Setup

   1. The authentication you enforce
   2. Whether you maintain the same domain over time or frequently change it
   3. How you segregate transactional and non-transactional emails
   4. The security of your connections
   5. Email flow, in terms of the number of connections per IP or emails sent per IP per minute

2. Sending Patterns

   1. Proper warm-up and ramp-up techniques
   2. Consistent sending patterns
   3. Steady growth instead of spikes
   4. Overall email health in the long term

3. Signals From Recipients

   1. Positives: Read, Click, Forward, Mark as Important, Star, Mark as Not Spam, Add Sender To The Address List
   2. Negatives: Delete, Mark as Spam, Unsubscribe
   3. Subtle signals like lack of engagement and repeated soft bounces. These might not have an immediate effect, like spam complaints or hard bounces. Still, if you ignore these subtle signals and continue emailing these customers, ESPs will register that you’re disregarding these signals and penalize your reputation.

4. Compliance

   1. Here’s a quick email compliance checklist for you
   2. Non-compliance will result in reputation issues
   3. Signals you should monitor for compliance include: Delivery rates, Deferrals, Opens, Clicks, Unsubscribes, and Reported Spam Complaints (Actuals and Trends)

How To Check Domain Reputation Data

Customer engagement platforms like MoEngage display your domain reputation information in the dashboard so you can understand your domain’s health and its impact on the performance of your email campaigns. Domain reputation is indicated as High, Medium, Low, or Bad.

You can see the domain reputation on the:

• Campaign page
  • You can filter campaigns based on reputation while creating exports.
• Email settings configuration page
  • You can see historical trends in your domain reputation.
• Email campaign creation page
  • When you hover your mouse over a specific domain, you can see more information, such as when the reputation information was last updated. 
• Email Campaign Analytics Page

How A Domain Gets Low/Bad Reputation Score

Sending behaviors such as the ones listed below typically result in a low/bad reputation, either as a gradual or sudden drop:

1. Sudden increases in email volumes

If you suddenly increase the volume of emails you’re sending, ESPs will flag and penalize your domain.

2. Emails sent to unengaged customers from a new domain

Gmail, like all other Mailbox Providers, rate limits the emails from a new IP and does not accept higher volumes from a new domain or IP. 

You need domain warm-up for a good reputation. You can do this by slowly increasing volume limits and acceptance rates. Start by sening highly relevant content to a small batch of engaged customers at a slow pace (low RPM).

3. Emails sent despite declining open/clicks or uptick of spam complaints/unsubscribes

If you ignore negative signals from recipients, Gmail and other ESPs will mark your emails as spam to protect other customers from future spam.

4. A gap in sending patterns followed by the high volume of emails sent

IPs and domains tend to cool off after three weeks of inactivity. So they will slowly lose their reputation and ramped-up state. Any inactivity must be followed by a smaller send to the most engaged customers and a gradual volume increase.

5. Fixed sending patterns that don’t account for engagement

If you’re sending the same fixed number of emails over a long period, it shows ESPs that you’re not reading your customers’ engagement signals. This will cause your domain to be penalized because ESPs want domains to keep customer engagement at the forefront of every email campaign.

6. A lack of suppression for inactive customers

This one’s also closely tied to signals from end customers. If customers are not interacting with your emails, you need to change something about your strategy. You should either stop reaching out to them or change your sending patterns. If your changed strategy still doesn’t elicit a positive response, you should suppress them permanently.

7. Emails sent to purchased lists or customers who did not explicitly sign up to receive emails.

This violates all the basic rules of list management, and your domain will be heavily penalized if you do this.

How To Improve Domain Reputation

Here’s a quick checklist of steps to resolve domain reputation issues based on the most common issues.

Step 1: Pause Violating Campaigns

• Identify all vendors from where you are sending emails through the “Mail: From Domain.”
• Pause all emails (one-time, event triggered, transactional) sent through this.
  • Ideally, you should not send transactional and non-transactional emails from the same domain (domain/IP set).
  • If the compliance requirements are met, there is no need to pause transactional emails. However, you should pause all one-time emails.

Step 2: Reflect and Correct

• Identify the root cause behind the reputation drop.
• Fix all relevant issues.
• Make sure you check all the right boxes. Take this as a cue to clean your email setup and follow all the compliance and best practice recommendations.
• Have checkpoints to detect issues immediately so you can always stay on top.
• Raise a ticket to Gmail explaining the cause behind the reputation issues, your changes, and the next steps you plan to follow.
• Set frequency capping to limit the number of emails sent to customers per day/week. Start slow before gradually increasing frequency.
• Use delivery controls to maintain a good email experience.
• Set lower RPM so emails are spread out each minute rather than sending high volumes simultaneously.

 Step 3: Resume and Ramp Up

• Resume your transactional emails first.
  • To reiterate, do not send transactional and promotional emails from the same domains and IPs.
  • If they are, separate them while correcting your email setup.
• Next, resume your personalized event-triggered campaigns.
• Then, slowly start sending one-time campaigns to email openers and clickers (such as email opened 5 times in the last 60 days.)
  • Send at a lower RPM
  • Send only 2-3 campaigns per week.
• After the reputation improves (it could take 6-8 weeks), slowly ramp up the sending frequency and volume.
  • Be sure you are not emailing customers too frequently.
  • Be cautious as you open up the emails to non-engaged customers.
  • Ramp up slowly.
    

Step 4: Customize Your Sending Patterns

• Learn from the error before.
• Customize your sending behavior to keep up with the customer’s changing interests.
  • Create lifecycle campaigns to engage your customers.
  • Use dynamic segments so inactive customers get dropped off automatically.
  • Use personalization across every aspect of your email.
• Monitor the engagement and reputation regularly.
  • Campaign analytics to review campaign performance.
  • Create dashboards to monitor trends.
  • Keep an eye on domain reputation.
• Take a step back when you spot issues. Resolve, resume, ramp-up.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, managing domain reputation is crucial for ensuring email deliverability and maintaining a healthy sender reputation. It is not enough to change domains or IPs to fix reputation issues, as this is only a temporary solution that can harm your brand’s overall reputation in the long run. 

Instead, it is important to address the underlying issues and follow best practices for email setup, sending patterns, compliance, and customer engagement. By taking these steps and continuously monitoring and adjusting your sending behavior, you can improve your domain reputation and enhance the performance of your email campaigns.