Kevin Senne posted over on the Oracle blog about how we need to stop caring about SenderScore and why it’s not as useful a metric as it used to be. I can’t argue with anything he’s said. I think there is way too much focus on IP reputation and SenderScore. There’s so much more to deliverability than just one or two factors. In fact, if you’ve been to any of my recent...
Reputation is more complex than a single number
I checked our SenderScore earlier this month, as quite a few people mentioned that they’d seen SenderScore changes – likely due to changed algorithms and new data sources. It sure looks like something changed. Our SenderScore was, for a while, zero out of a hundred. That’s as bad as it’s possible to get. I didn’t get a screenshot of the zero score, but I grabbed...
I do not think that means what you think it means
Yesterday, I looked at the analysis of ESP delivery done by Mr. Geake. Today we’ll look at some of his conclusions. “Being blacklisted most likely suggests that sender IP either sends out to a great deal of unknown or angry recipients.” That’s not how most blocklists work. Most blocklists are driven by spam traps or by the personal mailboxes of the list maintainers. The...
Twisting information around
One of my mailing lists was asking questions today about an increase in invitation mailings from Spotify. I’d heard about them recently, so I started digging through my mailbox to see if I’d received one of these invites. I hadn’t, but it clued me into a blog post from early this year that I hadn’t seen before. Research: ESPs might get you blacklisted. That article is full...
Reputation monitoring sites
There are a number of sites online that provide public information about reputation of an IP address or domain name. Sender Score – . Provided by Return Path. They collect data from some ISPs and blocklists. Using a proprietary formula, they calculate a sender score running from 1 – 100 for each IP address sending mail to their network. Higher scores means a better reputation. Can be...
Gmail and SenderScore
Return Path discusses that a high (>80) SenderScore is correlated with inbox delivery at Gmail.
Public reputation data
IP based reputation is a measure of the quality of the mail coming from a particular IP address. Because of how reputation data is collected and evaluated it is difficult for third parties to provide a reputation score for a particular IP address. The data has to be collected in real time, or as close to real time as possible. Reputation is also very specific to the source of the data. I have...