Email reputation score
What is Email reputation score?
An email reputation score is a mailbox provider's ongoing grade for a sending domain or IP address, computed from spam complaint rate, bounce rate, engagement (opens and clicks), spam-trap hits, and authentication pass rates (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). It is recalculated continuously and decides whether the next send lands in the inbox, the spam folder, or gets rejected. A sender can't read the exact score — mailbox providers keep it private — so healthy senders track the visible inputs instead.
More detail
The score is per-identity: a mailbox provider grades a sending domain and a sending IP separately, so a clean domain on a torched IP (or the reverse) still filters. This is why a dedicated IP matters above a volume threshold — on a shared IP pool, another sender's bad traffic can drag the shared reputation down with it.
Reputation resets slowly and recovers slowly: a provider weights recent sending history, so a campaign with a complaint spike keeps hurting for weeks even after the list is cleaned. The standard repair path is to stop the bleeding (suppress the bad segment), then rebuild with small, engaged sends — the same warmup curve a new domain follows.
Because the exact score is intentionally opaque, the workable toolset is the inputs it consumes: keep hard bounces suppressed, honor unsubscribes at send-time, authenticate with SPF/DKIM/DMARC, and prune long-unengaged addresses before they turn into spam-trap or complaint signals.
Frequently asked
- Where can I look up my email reputation score?
- Mailbox providers calculate their own reputational grade internally and don't publish the number itself. Third-party monitors estimate it from observable signals (complaints, bounces, trap hits, blocklist presence), and engagement metrics in your own platform — bounce rate, complaint rate, opens — are the most reliable proxy you can act on.
- Is an email reputation score the same as sender reputation?
- Yes — the two phrases describe the same trust grade a mailbox provider assigns to a sending domain or IP. 'Sender reputation' is the broader industry term; 'email reputation score' names the measurable, continuously recalculated value a provider computes from bounce, complaint, engagement, and authentication signals.
- What damages an email reputation score the fastest?
- A sudden spike in spam complaints and hard bounces, a hit on a pristine spam trap, or skipping authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC failures). Because the score weights recent behavior heavily, one poorly targeted campaign can degrade inbox placement for weeks while smaller, engaged sends rebuild it.
See also
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