A sender's reputation can follow not only an IP address but a brand and a sending domain. A holistic approach is necessary when considering a sender's reputation as no one factor alone determines what that reputation is. Reputation can be broadly defined as the opinion of a community toward an object. Knowing what the community looks for when determining a reputation active campaign will allow you to maximize your delivery rates.
Spamtraps We first eluded to spamtraps when we discussed Paid Subscriber Lists. A spamtrap is an email address that appears to be valid but is in fact used by ISPs to catch spammers. You will sometimes hear these referred to as "honey pots." Spammers use harvesting programs which scan millions of web pages looking for email addresses. These email addresses may come from old email addresses which are recycled by ISPs in order to catch commercial emailers that use old, rented, or paid subscriber lists. Some sites bury email addresses in their source code so that they are picked up by harvesting programs. The company where the email originated is then alerted to any incoming emails that go to that address at which time they contact your web host and file a spam complaint. Spam traps are bad news. Its been reported that your delivery rate can drop as many as 20 points drop with one spam trap hit. Spamtraps are one of many factors that ISPs look at when calculating your sender reputation. Not only is your delirability affected but they can result in temporary or long term blocks. Good list maintenance is necessary for avoiding spam traps. Here are some things you will need to avoid:
This is used to prevent domain forgery and spoofing and provides a framework for helping ISPs to distinguish between legitimate email senders and spammers. ISPs Identifying and verifying a claimed domain name has been authenticated or authorized for sending from a MTA makes it possible to treat suspected forgeries with suspician, reject known active campaign forgeries, and block email addresses from known spamming domains. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) - a record that allows you to determine which computers can send emails on behalf of your domain. Adding an SPF record to your domain name's TXT entry, while not required, can help improve email delivery rates by reducing the chance that the emails you send will be seen as spam. It can also help prevent others from sending spam and using your domain name. This is used by Bellsouth, AOL, Gmail, and MSN/Hotmail.
Your system admin should be able to assist you with ensuring that the following technical configurations are in line as they can improve or harm your sender reputation.
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