How to Manage Your Email Reputation

This is a quick reference cheat sheet to keep tabs on your Email Reputation and specific steps on how to improve your Email Reputation through email authentication. Don’t let the techy term put you off. It’s critical you know this stuff or send it to your technical administrator so they know this stuff.

What is Email Reputation?

It’s a number of things. It’s the reputation of your domain, email addresses, shared or dedicated IP address at your Email Service Provider (ESP), your email server, etc. You build it over time. You actually start out in a little bit of a negative situation so it’s important to get your campaigns right – right out of the gate. It’s determined by everything you do in your email campaign so follow best practices or else. This post focuses on the technical aspects of Email Reputation.

Briefly, there are things that happen behind the scenes when you hit send that you may not be aware of. Each recipient’s email server conducts a “hand shake” with your ESP. The server asks “‘HELO’. Are you who you say you are and do you have authority to send email to me?” The server is asking for the PTR record, or reverse-lookup record, which validates the authenticity of the originating IP Address of the email sender by resolving IP addresses to hostnames. That’s as technical as I’m going to get but take it seriously. Seriously! This is the absolute minimum you should have setup before sending out your email marketing campaigns.

Beyond PTR, there are a number of additional steps you can take to ensure greater deliverability and protection of your Email Reputation. Read on.

Quick Reference for Email Authentication and Email Reputation Management

Email Authentication

1. Determine Your Email Server’s IP Address
   • http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/
   • It will tell you if you already have Sender ID SPF Record setup.
   • If not, copy IP address for A record and MX record.
     Enter each domain name from which you send email (including your company’s smtp server – your own domain name) in the Sender ID SPF Record Wizzard
2. Generate SPF Record using this Sender ID SPF Record Setup Wizard
   • http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html
3. Setup PTR Record
   • Send the information you collect to whoever controls your DNS and ask them to setup your PTR record.

Get this Email Reputation Management Quick Reference Guide in PowerPoint.

Email Sender Reputation Management

Check Blacklists

• http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
• http://www.completewhois.com/rbl_lookup.htm

Check Email Reputation

• http://www.senderbase.org/senderbase_queries/rep_lookup
• http://www.senderscore.org
• http://sendmail.com/sm/resources/tools/ip_reputation/

Email Authentication Types

Wikipedia on Email Authentication

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_authentication#Authenticating_senders

• PTR (reverse lookup – all mail servers)
• SPF
• Sender ID
• DKIM
• Domain Keys

Improve Your Email Deliverablity With Third-Party Certification

• CSA – Certified Senders Alliance
  http://www.certifiedsendersalliance.com/
• Goodmail CertifiedEmail Senders

  http://www.goodmailsystems.com/

• Sender Score Certified
  http://www.returnpath.net/commercialsender/certification/
• SuretyMail

  http://www.suretymail.com/

• TRUSTe Privacy Seal
  http://www.truste.org/businesses/email_privacy_seal.php

Get this Email Reputation Management Quick Reference Guide in PowerPoint.

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1. Hurting/Helping Your Brand With Unsubscribe Process
2. Email Bounces: Are Yours Automatically Removed? Maybe Not!
3. Case Study: Avoiding Spam Filters. Simple Fixes for Your Emails
4. Top 10: Improve Email Deliverability and Response