What is a Sender Score?
Sender Score from Return path is a key matrix used by many email service providers and ISP's to determine if the originating email is legitimate or spam. Return Path's Sender Score reputation rank, compiled through their cooperative reputation network, provides access to data that ISPs and other email receivers can use to determine whether to accept or reject email
Sender Score aggregates data from 60 million mailboxes at a variety of ISPs, spam filtering and security companies. This suite of tools provides a deep view of the direct measures of a sender's behaviour and the impact those behaviours have on email recipients and the sender's brand and email deliverability.
For Email Senders
What is your email reputation? With Sender Score Reputation Data, the world's most comprehensive database of email sender reputation designed to help mailers, you’ll know right away what ISPs and other email receivers think of your email program – and how your program stacks up against everyone else’s.
Until you fully understand your email reputation, it is difficult to know what you need to do to improve your email delivery rates. Are you mailing too often? Not frequently enough? Do you have a poor email infrastructure? Are your bounce rates too high? There are so many variables that affect your email deliverability that a reputation management system is a necessity to better understand the areas you need to improve that drive the biggest return. Sender Score Reputation Monitor is a recognised email reputation management system that helps you dive into the details of your programs and make changes that immediately improve your email campaigns.
Why Reputation Matters.
A recent Return Path study shows that email sender reputation, and not content, is the major factor in whether your email reaches the inbox. 83% of the time, sender reputation is the cause of filtering. All email receivers use different standards to determine what triggers filtering, but they all hinge on your email reputation. By compiling the same data for every email sender, and making it public for both senders and receivers, the playing field becomes more level. Think of it as a credit score for your email program. Everyone sees what the standards are, who is failing them, and what to do about it. In the end, a good email reputation becomes the critical factor dictating if your email reaches the inbox.
Key things to know about Sender Score
What are the scores, and what do they mean?
In most cases, scores are calculated on a rolling 30-day average Sender Score: This score is derived from a proprietary Return Path algorithm, and represents an IP address's overall performance against metrics important to both ISPs and their customers who receive your email. For senders, this score represents the overall health of your email programs as they appear to receiving systems.
The following are Rank based Indices:
Complaints: This score represents how complaints about that IP address compare to all other IP addresses observed by the Sender Score Reputation Network. Complaint rates are calculated as complaints divided by accepted mail and complaint scores are a rank based on your complaint rates.
Volume: Volume is not in itself good or bad, but is an important part of the overall reputation algorithm: for example, an IP address which sends 100 messages and receives 99 complaints is problematic, while an IP address which sends 100,000 messages and receives 99 complaints is probably okay. A higher score equates to larger volume monitored by the Sender Score Reputation Network.
External Reputation: This score shows how the IP address compares to all other IP addresses seen by the Sender Score Reputation Network on a variety of external blacklists and whitelists.
Unknown Users: This score represents the rank of the IP address's unknown user rate compared to all other IP addresses seen by the Sender Score Reputation Network. Unknown user rates are taken directly from incoming SMTP logs of participating ISPs, tracking how often an IP address attempts to send a message to an address which does not exist.
Rejected: This represents how often messages are rejected (bounced due to some policy reason, usually spam filtering or blacklisting) compared to other IP addresses seen in the Sender Score Reputation Network.
What does ''Accepted'' mean?
''Accepted'' is the number of email messages accepted for delivery at our receiving sources. This number is expressed as the number of messages seen minus the number of messages rejected (the combination of ''Message Rejected'' and ''Sender Rejected'' minus the number of ''Unknown Users''.
What does ''Accepted Rate'' mean?
''Accepted Rate'' is a ratio of email messages delivered to the inbox, compared to email messages attempted. This is the number of messages accepted for delivery, divided by the number of messages seen by our receiving sources.
What is the ''Unknown User Rate''?
''Unknown User Rate'' is a ratio of unknown users, or invalid email addresses, compared to the amount of email seen by our receiving sources. An 'unknown user' or 'no such user' or 'invalid address' is usually a '550 5.1.1' error message that will appear in your SMTP logs however, not all ISPs use the '5.1.1' extended reply code, and not all '550' replies refer to unknown users. It is often necessary to review the text accompanying that SMTP reply to be certain of its meaning.
Interface Servers and FQDN's have maintained a very high sender score of 90 and above by ensuring best practices. This ensures our clients enjoy some of the highest inbox delivery rates and great email marketer reputation possible. To know about our Infrastructure and processes please click here. To know more about how you can benefit from wmail marketing campaigns through us, send us an mail or click here to send us an enquiry.
