Sender Score Reputation Monitor tracks reputation data for more than 20 million sending IP addresses, as provided by ISPs, filtering companies and other proprietary sources, and assigns each IP address a 1-100 reputation score akin to a credit score. The overall Sender Score is comprised by analyzing six indices -- including complaint rates, volume of email sent, unknown user rates, email infrastructure and unsubscribe practices using a precise methodology to assess how senders are handled by various email receivers and how they stack up against each other. Sender Score are updated daily based on continuous data streams from ISPs and filtering companies.
Sender Scores upward of 70 are more likely to be delivered to the inbox, while scores fewer than 30 are typically blocked outright. Delivery for scores between 30-70 vary by ISP and filtering package.
While Sender Scores alone do not guarantee delivery or blocking, they are highly correlated to how email is treated by email receivers. Most commercial marketers have scores between 60 and 100.
Spammers are most likely to be below 30, though they change IP addresses so often that a lot of spam still seems to be delivered because they lack delivery and reputation history.
Why care about reputation scores?
Email reputation scores matter in that they drive inbox delivery rates. Email receivers use reputation data to vet incoming email, making blocking and filtering decisions based primarily on a sender's historical reputation.
With 20 percent of legitimate commercial email getting blocked and filtered at ISPs, and upward of 25 percent by corporate filtering packages, non-delivery remains a large issue for marketers. Focusing on email reputation metrics to improve program results is the best way to increase delivery rates.
Return Path's Sender Score Reputation Monitor updates scores daily for 20 million IP addresses sending traceable volumes of email. Scores reported in the system are comparative to other senders.
