Email Reputation & Deliverability

We all hate spam emails in our inbox, so mailbox providers like Gmail and Outlook keep tracks of the reputation of each sender. If mailbox providers like Gmail thinks that you’re a spammer due to bad reputation, your emails will automatically go to the Spam inbox, and your subscribers will not get your emails. So, as a email sender, you should never spam.

By maintaining a good email reputation, you will have a good email deliverability. This means that subscribers will actually receive your emails as intended.

Here are a few key factors affecting the sender reputation of your email address

Your email address

If your email address for sending is relatively new and have never been used before, then your email address will have a neutral reputation. A neutral reputation is fine. You can improve your reputation by sending out good emails.

Your IP address

This can get a bit more technical, but the idea is that your emails are usually being sent out by a mail server with a specific IP address. Some mail server providers will mix your emails with others, so if other senders are polluting the IP address that you share with spam emails, then your reputation can be significantly affected.

Using FulFillKit, you will by default have a separate email reputation from other accounts, so your emails will be sent out using IP addresses that have similar reputations yours. And, if you want an IP reputation all to yourself, then we offer Private IP addresses. These Private IP addresses will only be used to send your emails, so your reputations will never be affected by others.

Whom you send emails to

Each subscriber will initially come into your customer lifecycle as a hot subscriber; however, as time goes by, each will eventually become a cold subscriber.

What is hot subscriber? A hot subscriber is usually someone who has recently opened one of your emails or clicked on one of the clicks on your emails. These actions indicate that the subscriber is actually interested in your emails. How recent? Typically in the last 30 to 60 days.

What is cold subscriber? Basically any subscriber who hasn’t opened your emails or clicked on any email links in the past 30 to 60 days.

You want to only send emails to hot subscribers. Almost never send emails to cold subscribers. Sending to cold subscribers carries too much risk in damaging your reputation that might not justify the returns you might get.

This is also the reason why FulFillKit only charge you for monthly active subscribers.

Maintaining email complaints and bounces

Lastly, some subscribers will mistakenly input an invalid email address, so when you send out an email to an invalid email address, it will result in an email bounce. Whenever you receive an email bounce notification, you want to stop sending to that email address in the future.

Similarly, some subscribers will inevitably mark your emails as email spams. Whenever you receive an email complaint notification resulting from someone marking your emails as spams, you want to stop sending to that email address in the future as well.