Sender score works in a similar way to how your credit score works to determine your credit-worthiness. It is used by businesses that send marketing emails, to measure the health of email campaigns.
What is Sender Score?
Your sender score is a number between zero and one hundred that identifies the quality of your sender reputation and provides details on how email service providers view your IP address. Different Internet Service Providers and email service providers use this score to determine how emails are classified.
When it comes to determining your sender reputation, email service providers take a lot of different factors into consideration. These include the number of unknown emails that you send messages to, the number of spam complaints that your emails get, your bounce rate and deliverability rate, if you are on any industry blacklists, and more.
If your sender score is below 70, this indicates that you need to spend some time working on improving your sender reputation. You can do this by learning more about the criteria that email service providers use to determine which senders reach recipient inboxes. At 70-80, your score is going well but could be improved.
Continue following best practices and make sure that your email campaigns are well-optimized. A score over eighty means that you have an excellent sender reputation and may be able to get preferential treatment with some major email service providers.
How to Check Sender Score?
While there is no singular score that is used by all email service providers to evaluate your sending actions, you can use a range of mailbox-specific and third-party tools that are designed to help you check your sender score and see your sending reputation.
The tools that are available are based on different sources of data and score senders based on practices and results. Some of the best tools to consider for checking your sender reputation and score include:
• SenderScore.org: Use this tool to discover where you stand on the 0-100 rating of the sender score. The higher your score, the better your reputation and email deliverability rate will be. When you use this tool, your score is calculated on a 30-day, rolling average and give you a clearer idea of where your IP address ranks in comparison with others.
• TrustedSource: Run by McAfee, this is a reputable third-party tool that provides further information on your sender reputation. It also provides further information on mail servers, domain name systems, affiliations, and the history, associations, and activation of your domain.
• Google Postmaster Tools: This tool is available to senders to help you track data on high volume sending to Gmail. It provides a lot of helpful data that you can use to improve your reputation including your domain and IP reputation and Gmail delivery errors. You can also use a similar tool provided by Microsoft called Microsoft SNDS, which offers a similar service for sending to their email service providers.
How to Improve Sender Score?
The good news is that your sender score and reputation is not permanent. If you are not happy with your current sender score after using one of the above tools to check, there are several steps that you can take to improve it. Some strategies that you can use to boost your sender reputation include:
• Increase email volume gradually; avoid jumping into sending thousands of emails a day and focus on more engaged subscribers instead while you gradually increase the amount you send
• Be consistent and commit to sending emails at certain times. Stick to a regular schedule rather than sending emails inconsistently or intermittently
• Check your classification, particularly in terms of the industry you operate in, which you will have set when you registered your domain. If you’re sending unrelated emails, they may automatically be classed as spam
• Only email subscribers who have opted-in; make sure that you get permission from everybody on your list and don’t send emails to anybody who isn’t expecting them
• Clean up your list by removing any dead or inactive emails from it on a regular basis to improve your bounce rate and email deliverability rate
• Segment your list; make sure that recipients are getting emails that are highly relevant to them by segmenting them into different groups based on demographics, past purchases, and other factors
• Make it easy to opt-out; nobody likes feeling stuck with getting marketing emails that they don’t want, and if you make it hard for recipients to unsubscribe, they will only end up marking your emails as spam instead
Best Email Sender Score Tools
Aside from the tools that you can use to check your sender score and better understand where you are at in terms of your reputation with email service providers, you may also find several tools useful for putting the best practices in place and improving your sender score overall.
One of the best tools that you can use to improve your sender score is Bouncer. This tool also improves the deliverability and bounce rate of your emails by ensuring that you are only sending messages to valid email addresses.
It offers an easy-to-use app where all you need to do is drag and drop your email list to check it. You can check up to 250k emails at one time, making it a quick and efficient option before starting any new email marketing campaign to ensure that your sender reputation will not be harmed by sending to irrelevant or inactive email addresses.
You can get started by using Bouncer’s email checker tool that takes a portion of your email list to run through the checking process or check your entire list by purchasing credits. There is no subscription needed as you simply purchase credits to use as and when you need. The more credits you purchase at once, the bigger your discount.
The credits never expire, and you can simply come back and use them next time you need to check your email list and remove any emails that might end up harming your sender score.
Best Email Sender Score Tools
Aside from the tools that you can use to check your sender score and better understand where you are at in terms of your reputation with email service providers, you may also find several tools useful for putting the best practices in place and improving your sender score overall.
One of the best tools that you can use to improve your sender score is Bouncer. This tool also improves the deliverability and bounce rate of your emails by ensuring that you are only sending messages to valid email addresses.
It offers an easy-to-use app where all you need to do is drag and drop your email list to check it. You can check up to 250k emails at one time, making it a quick and efficient option before starting any new email marketing campaign to ensure that your sender reputation will not be harmed by sending to irrelevant or inactive email addresses.
You can get started by using Bouncer’s email checker tool that takes a portion of your email list to run through the checking process or check your entire list by purchasing credits. There is no subscription needed as you simply purchase credits to use as and when you need. The more credits you purchase at once, the bigger your discount.
The credits never expire, and you can simply come back and use them next time you need to check your email list and remove any emails that might end up harming your sender score.
Izabela is a leading contributor to the Bouncer’s blog. She is inspired to help companies all around the world to get emails into their recipients’ inboxes