Reputation and loss of reputation

As a sender of emails, you can build up a reputation with email service providers such as Yahoo, GMX and Gmail. Building up a reputation is a manifold process involving many aspects:

• For example, your technical infrastructure.

  • Do you use authentication methods such as DKIM and DMARC?

  • Is your sender whitelisted with the CSA?

• Editorial, for example,

  • Layout of your email

  • Unsubscribe link

• User engagement, for example,

  • Openings

  • Clicks

  • Spam reports

The Brand Identity Protection feature helps you correctly set up your subdomain with regard to the key authentication procedures.

The details of the technical authentication procedures

• Use SPF (Sender Policy Framework) to ensure that only authorised senders can send emails from your domain.

• Use DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to sign your emails and ensure that the content of your emails cannot be tampered with.

• Use DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) to control what to do with dispatches from your domain for which authentication using SPF or DKIM fails.

• Use BIMI (Brand Message Identification) so that the recipient can recognise authenticated dispatches from your domain at first glance by your company logo.

Correctly set up your subdomain by following the step-by-step instructions. Then you will meet all the technical requirements for an optimal reputation.

You should also strengthen your reputation through qualitative measures, in addition to the technical setup in the Brand Identity Protection feature.

Qualitative measures to strengthen your reputation

• Make sure that the content of your emails is of high quality and tailored to your recipients. This will help you achieve high click-through and click-to-open rates. It will not only make you happy, but will also be evaluated positively by email service providers.

• Build up a high-quality mailing list using the double opt-in subscription process. Maintain your addresses, refrain from buying addresses and delete bounced addresses promptly. After all, if you have many bounces, it negatively impacts your reputation.

For more suggestions on how to strengthen your reputation through high-quality email marketing methods, see our whitepaper on ‘Deliverability’.

What can lead to a loss of reputation:

• Your domain for sending transaction emails is placed on a blacklist. It can happen if you have unknowingly written to a spam trap, for example. Spam traps are specially created or inactive email addresses that have not given their consent to receive newsletters.

• Email service providers such as Yahoo, GMX and Gmail no longer trust you as the sender, and your emails end up in the spam folder.

In the worst case, a loss of reputation can result in email service providers blocking you as a sender, and you cannot send your emails for daily business correspondence anymore.

It is possible to prevent a negative impact to your emails for daily business correspondence. Take the following precautions:

• Use the subdomain that you use in Inxmail Commerce only for Inxmail Commerce and not for other purposes.

• Do not send your emails in Inxmail Commerce using your maindomain.

• Set up the Brand Identity Protection feature by following the step-by-step instructions.

• Set up the Brand Identity Protection feature by following the step-by-step instructions.

• Separate your subdomain that you use for Inxmail Commerce from your main domain and your emails for daily business correspondence.

• Do not write to recipients if you have not received their consent to send transaction emails.

• Be an active practitioner of high-quality email marketing: For more suggestions on how to strengthen your reputation, see our whitepaper on ‘Deliverability’.