Summary
A low sender score can be a cause for concern for any email marketer, signaling potential deliverability issues. However, the true impact of this score and what steps to take often depend on a deeper understanding of its underlying causes and the actual performance metrics of your email campaigns. It's crucial to differentiate between a reported low score and tangible deliverability problems.
Key findings
- Sender score unreliability: Sender Score can fluctuate wildly and may not always reflect actual deliverability performance at major mailbox providers. It can be a vanity metric if not correlated with other issues.
- Focus on actual metrics: Key performance indicators like high delivery rates, strong open rates, and consistent click-through rates are more indicative of good sender reputation than a fluctuating sender score.
- Specific domain issues: Problems may be isolated to specific domains (e.g., cable mailbox providers) rather than a global issue with your sending practices.
- Data quality: Sometimes issues with sender score reporting tools themselves (e.g., flipped filtered and rejected metrics) can lead to misleading scores.
- Volume impact: Sudden significant increases in email volume can temporarily affect sender scores, even if sending practices remain consistent.
Key considerations
- Monitor real deliverability: Instead of fixating on a sender score, regularly check your actual inbox placement rates, bounce rates, and engagement metrics.
- Investigate specific rejections: If you see a high bounce rate from particular domains, obtain bounce logs to understand the exact rejection reasons. You can also use tools to test your email deliverability for issues.
- Review email authentication: Ensure your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are correctly configured and aligned. A common issue is SPF records not covering all sending sources, leading to authentication failures. For more, see our guide to DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
- Proactive communication: Engage with your Email Service Provider (ESP) or a deliverability platform if you notice a significant drop in score or performance, especially if you suspect underlying data issues. Validity itself has a public portal for support, as outlined on their support page.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often experience fluctuations in sender scores and sometimes receive concerning reports from their ESPs. Despite these alerts, their actual email performance metrics (like open rates and delivery rates) might remain strong. This creates confusion and can lead to unnecessary panic regarding their sender reputation. Marketers often look for concrete reasons for score drops, such as being on a blocklist, but find their domain is clean.
Key opinions
- Initial panic: A sudden low sender score, especially when it's never been that low, can cause significant concern among marketers, leading them to question their entire email program.
- Conflicting information: Marketers frequently receive conflicting information, with ESP support suggesting issues like missing SPF records, even when existing setups have worked for years without changes.
- Reliance on specific tools: There's a tendency to rely heavily on the metrics provided by specific tools, such as Validity's SenderScore, even when other performance metrics are stable.
- Focus on deliverability rates: Despite a low sender score, marketers often maintain high actual delivery rates (e.g., 99.3%) and healthy engagement, suggesting the score might not reflect true deliverability.
- ISP-specific challenges: Some marketers report persistent challenges with specific mailbox providers, particularly cable domains, noting a history of finicky delivery to these recipients.
Key considerations
- Validate ESP claims: When an ESP suggests an issue, such as an SPF problem, use independent tools like aboutmy.email to verify the claim rather than solely relying on ESP support. It helps to troubleshoot a dropping email sender score.
- Prioritize real-world performance: If your delivery, open, and click rates are stable and healthy, it's often more important than a fluctuating sender score. These metrics are a better indicator of email reputation and deliverability.
- Understand sender score categories: Familiarize yourself with what metrics SenderScore tracks (complaints, spam traps, rejected/filtered rates, unknown users) to interpret its feedback effectively. Mailgun's blog on improving sender reputation also highlights this.
- Seek deeper insights from ESP: If you're seeing high bounce rates to specific domains, push your ESP for detailed bounce logs to identify specific rejection messages.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Email Geeks observes that their sender score in Marketo's Validity dropped to an unprecedented low of 67, despite no noticeable changes in other performance metrics or being on any blocklists.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Mailjet emphasizes that a consistently low sender score often correlates with high bounce rates, frequent email blockages, and diminished open rates in email campaigns.
What the experts say
Email deliverability experts generally advise against over-reliance on a single sender score metric, such as Validity's SenderScore. While these scores can provide some indication, they are often proprietary and may not directly correlate with actual inbox placement at major ISPs. Experts emphasize focusing on observable deliverability metrics and understanding the nuances of how different mailbox providers, especially smaller ones, handle email filtering and rejections. They also highlight common misconceptions about email authentication and ESP support quality.
Key opinions
- Sender score as a vanity metric: Many experts consider sender score metrics (like Validity's SenderScore) unreliable and a 'vanity metric' because they can fluctuate widely without reflecting actual deliverability issues at major ISPs.
- ESP support limitations: Frontline ESP support often lacks deep deliverability expertise, providing potentially misleading advice, such as incorrect SPF record issues.
- SPF alignment importance: The return-path domain, not necessarily the 'From' domain, determines SPF's relevance, meaning a missing SPF record for your 'From' domain might not be the issue ESP support suggests.
- Content filtering impact: Content filtering at mailbox providers, particularly cable ones, can influence sender score categories like 'message filtered' or 'sender rejected'.
- Direct bounce log analysis: To understand specific rejections (e.g., from Cablevision/Optonline.net), it is important to obtain detailed bounce logs from your ESP, as these provide exact reasons.
- Sender score data inaccuracies: There are known issues or bugs with Sender Score's metrics, where 'messages filtered' and 'messages rejected' might be flipped, leading to incorrect interpretations.
Key considerations
- Prioritize actual delivery metrics: Rely on your own delivery, open, and click rates as primary indicators of your email deliverability, rather than proprietary sender scores. Consider our guide on how relevant sender score is to deliverability.
- Seek direct support from Validity: If using Validity tools, it's often more effective to open a ticket directly with Validity support to troubleshoot specific score drops or data anomalies, especially when Marketo (or other ESP) is the reseller.
- Understand volume changes: Be aware that sudden changes in email volume can trigger temporary score drops, which may normalize over time without intervention. This also applies to low sender scores despite high delivery rates.
- Email list hygiene: Even with a dedicated IP, maintaining a clean list is paramount to avoid blacklists and keep your domain reputation strong. Ensure you are checking your blocklists regularly.
Expert view
Email deliverability expert from Email Geeks suggests asking aboutmy.email to get a report on your email's setup to understand if SPF records actually matter for your specific configuration, which is faster than extended Q&A with limited information.
Expert view
Email deliverability expert from Word to the Wise notes that a low sender score often indicates issues like high bounce rates, spam complaints, or being listed on a blocklist, all of which directly affect email deliverability.
What the documentation says
Email deliverability documentation often provides a foundational understanding of sender score and reputation, outlining the various factors that influence these metrics. While proprietary scores like Validity's SenderScore are mentioned, the emphasis is typically on broader principles of email authentication, list hygiene, and engagement. Documentation generally advises that the objective of a good sender score is to ensure emails bypass spam filters and reach the intended inbox, thereby protecting users from unwanted mail.
Key findings
- Score definition: Sender Score is a numeric value (0-100) reflecting sender reputation and how mailbox providers perceive your IP address's quality.
- Impact of low score: A low sender score can result in emails being marked as spam or outright blocked, serving as a protective measure for users against fraud and unwanted mail.
- Key influencing factors: Factors influencing sender reputation include maintaining mailing list hygiene, providing clear unsubscribe options, utilizing double opt-ins, and checking for blocklist presence.
- Engagement's role: Low engagement rates can negatively impact sender scores, underscoring the importance of creating relevant content for your audience.
- Dedicated IP considerations: Using dedicated IPs can help mitigate risks from other senders' poor practices that might affect reputation on shared IPs.
Key considerations
- Proactive reputation management: Companies should regularly work to improve and maintain a strong sender score to ensure consistent deliverability. This aligns with our guidance on resolving email deliverability issues.
- Email authentication: Proper configuration of SPF and DKIM records, alongside a strict DMARC policy, is fundamental for improving and recovering sender reputation. For more on DMARC, see how to safely transition your DMARC policy.
- Consistent sending volume: Managing sending volume to avoid sudden spikes is crucial, as inconsistent volume can negatively impact reputation.
- List hygiene practices: Regularly cleaning and maintaining your mailing list helps prevent high bounce rates and spam trap hits, which are critical for good sender reputation.
Technical article
Documentation from SenderScore.org defines Sender Score as a numerical representation between 0 and 100, which quantifies the quality of your sender reputation and reflects how mailbox providers perceive your IP address.
Technical article
Documentation from Mailgun states that maintaining mailing list hygiene is crucial for protecting and improving sender reputation, along with providing easy unsubscribe options and using double opt-ins.
Related resources
15 resources
Related pages
What factors influence email deliverability and how does SenderScore work?
How to interpret and use email sender reputation scores effectively, especially for low volume senders?
How to troubleshoot and address a dropping email sender score?
Why is SenderScore showing inaccurate data or low scores?
Why has my sender score dropped and what can I do about it?
Why is my Sender Score low despite having a high delivery rate?
How can I improve my email reputation and deliverability?
How relevant is sender score to email deliverability?
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