NickTheGreek 160 Report post Posted February 2, 2017 We always stress the importance of a strong sending reputation. By keeping an eye on your engagement (opens, clicks TiNs, etc.) and reputation (spam complaints, spam traps, unknown users, etc.) metrics you’ll get a good picture of how your emails are being received by subscribers. But if you’re looking for another measure of your reputation, you can take advantage of a handful of resources that will let you know where you stand. Here are 5 sites that will help you check your sending reputation and keep you on track: SenderScore.org Like a credit score, a Sender Score is a measure of your reputation. Scores are calculated from 0 to 100. The higher your score, the better your reputation and the higher your email deliverability rate. Numbers are calculated on a rolling 30-day average and illustrate where your IP address ranks against other IP addresses. This service is provided by Return Path. Senderbase.org Senderbase is a product of Cisco and provides you with the tools to check your reputation by ranking you as Good, Neutral, or Poor. Good means there is little or no threat activity. Neutral means your IP address or domain is within acceptable parameters, but may still be filtered or blocked. Poor means there is a problematic level of threat activity and you are likely to be filtered or blocked. ReputationAuthority WatchGuard’s ReputationAuthority helps protect business and government organizations from unwanted email and web traffic that contain spam, malware, spyware, malicious code, and phishing attacks. You can look up your IP address or domain, receive a reputation score from 0-100, and get the percentage of emails that were good versus bad. IP lookup for ReputationAuthority BarracudaCentral Barracuda Networks provides both an IP and domain reputation lookup via their Barracuda Reputation System; a real-time database of IP addresses with “poor” or “good” reputations. TrustedSource TrustedSource is a site very similar to senderbase.org, but run by McAfee. It provides information on both your domain’s email and web reputations as well as affiliations, domain name system (DNS), and mail server information. It also provides details on the history, activation, and associations of your domain. Takeaways Your email reputation is always in your control. By taking advantage of these resources, you can ensure that you’re being proactive about your email deliverability. But our delivery team likes to emphasize that while these reputation monitoring systems are a great help, they are not the authoritative metric by which you should determine the health of your entire email program. They are best used as one data point (an important one) in an overarching holistic assessment of your email program. It is not uncommon to see senders with SenderScores around 98-99 that are still having inboxing problems, so it’s important to know that just because you get a high score on one of these sites, it doesn’t mean you won’t be getting throttled, sent to the spam folder, or blocked outright. So the more eyes and ears you can have on your IP and domain reputation the better. https://sendgrid.com/blog/5-ways-check-sending-reputation/ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NickTheGreek 160 Report post Posted February 2, 2017 ReputationAuthority WatchGuard’s ReputationAuthority helps protect business and government organizations from unwanted email and web traffic that contain spam, malware, spyware, malicious code, and phishing attacks. You can look up your IP address or domain, receive a reputation score from 0-100, and get the percentage of emails that were good versus bad You Can Always Fix Your Reputation Another way to check your reputation is to find out if you are on any blacklists (a.k.a. blocklist). Blacklists contain lists of IPs or domains that pose a threat to consumer inboxes. Your email service provider may automatically alert you if you’re added to one, but it’s good to check for yourself. If you are on a blacklist, act quickly. Just a few spam complaints can add a legitimate sender to a blacklist. Blacklist Resources There are a lot of blacklists, but a good starting point is checking to see if your IPs or domains are on any of these popular lists: Barracuda Reputation Block List: BRBL is a free DNS blacklist (DNSBL) of IP addresses known to send spam. Invaluement: The Invaluement anti-spam DNSBL blocks elusive types of spam where the sender is sending unsolicited bulk email and escaping traditional detection methods. MXToolBox: MXToolbox shows you whether or not your domain or IP address is blacklisted and can perform checks on your DNS to see how it is configured. MultiRBL: This free multiple DNS blacklist service cross-references other blacklists by IPV4, IPV6, or by domain. Spamcop: The SpamCop Blocking List (SCBL) lists IP addresses that had mail reported as spam by SpamCop users. Spamhaus: The Spamhaus Project maintains a number of DNSBLs as part of their effort to identify and track spam sources, and provide anti-spam protection. To be removed from this list, visit their blocklist removal center. SURBL: Unlike most lists, SURBLs are not lists of message senders. SURBLs are lists of websites that have appeared in unsolicited messages. How Blacklists Know You’re Sending Unwanted Mail I recently asked one of email deliverability consultants, Luke Martinez, for some more context on how senders get added to blacklists and what you can do to protect your reputation. Here’s what he had to say: “All blacklists have different ways of determining whether or not a sender should be listed. But almost all of them use some combination of spam traps and recipient feedback. Many blacklist operators manage large networks of spam traps (email addresses that are valid, but have never signed up to receive mail, or addresses that have been inactive for an extended period of time and should no longer be receiving email). The blacklist operators will monitor these addresses and blacklist any IPs or domains that send excessive amounts of mail to them. Blacklist operators also work off of user feedback. A blacklist operator can trigger a listing if they receive an excessive amount of direct abuse complaints about mail coming from your IP or your domain. The key to avoiding blacklists is to make sure you are sending mail people want, removing non-engaged users from your mailing lists, not purchasing, renting, or sharing address lists, and using a confirmed opt-in strategy for collecting addresses.” Staying on top of your reputation by regularly monitoring your presence on blacklists and analyzing your engagement metrics can help clear your path to the inbox. SendGrid knows how important your reputation is, so our technical account managers and delivery team help to monitor blacklists on behalf of our customers and our 24/7 global support team is always ready and willing to help with questions. https://sendgrid.com/blog/blacklisted-check-7-popular-blacklists-keep-reputation-intact/ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
