by James MetzgerTop 4 Ways to Improve Your Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation is a little like a credit rating. This is a score that will be shared between the different email providers and that will be tied to your IP address and domain. Things that can hurt your sender reputation include having lots of emails that bounce, lots of complaints from contacts and a low open rate.
If your sender reputation gets too bad, then you risk becoming blacklisted and the number of messages that will get through to your audience will go down significantly.
So how do you prevent this from happening? How do you keep your sender reputation in the black? Here are some powerful strategies:
‘Warm Up’ Your IP
One advanced technique that many people aren’t aware of, is to ‘warm up’ their IP address. This means that you’re going to give your emails the best start possible and the way you’ll do that, is by starting out with a very small mailing list that is filled with only your most engaged fans (and maybe even some friends and family!). When you do this, you’ll build up some positive ‘credit’ as it were and this will then help make your address more resilient against future negative influences.
Keep Friends and Family Involved
This is one reason it can be a good idea to invite your friends and family onto your mailing list. What’s more is that if you keep them there subsequently, you’ll then have at least a few opens and reads guaranteed. This is a good way to avoid a scenario where you get zero opens and every little bit helps!
List Hygiene
List hygiene simply means that you are looking after your mailing list by removing the contacts that never read a single one of your messages or that always bounce. This is a simple matter of logging into your Autoresponder and deleting those users but it will make a big difference.
Double Opt-In
Finally, it is crucial that every single email list these days use a double opt in. This means that your new subscribers will need to confirm their email address via a confirmation message and that in turn ensures that the email address is real and also that the recipient checks it often and that they really are interested in signing up.
These small changes can make a massive difference to your deliverability, so get started right away!
