Domain reputation influences a significant proportion of the online ecosphere – and it impacts you in ways you may not even know. Behind the scenes, domain reputation information is utilized by email service providers (ESPs), Internet Service Providers, ISPs, security firms and threat intelligence services to protect people from bad connections, malicious websites, spammy and phishing emails, and more.
Various factors, including the domain name reputation, authentication, message content, and volume and frequency of email, influence how receivers and anti-spam services perceive senders and their messages. This information helps them decide whether to deliver a message to the inbox or junk folder, or block it completely.
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Many email service providers (ESPs) and ISPs keep their domain reputation scoring processes private, so it’s difficult to know exactly how they determine who’s good and who’s bad. If these companies shared their reputation scoring processes, nefarious actors could game the system to get around spam filters and blacklists.
Domain and IP reputation is impacted by a range of factors, including how long the domain has been in existence, how often it’s used, how much spam it generates, and how many spam complaints it receives. It’s also influenced by the CAN-SPAM act of 2003, which requires that any commercial or marketing email include an unsubscribe link.
The best way to maintain a strong domain reputation is to avoid sending too many unsolicited emails, use authenticated protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and monitor your email metrics regularly. It’s also important to “warm up” new domains and IP addresses, by gradually increasing the amount of email sent daily – over the course of a couple weeks.