What’s my Email Delivery Score?

Written by Jean Steckler
Steckler eMarketing, Westfield NJ 07090

Most B2B lead nurturing programs include email newsletters. Much effort is put into building lead lists, scheduling newsletter topics, designing and composing newsletters. Open and click-through rates are tracked. But little effort is devoted to tracking the company’s email deliverability.

If your company’s domain name has made it to a blacklist, all of the work spent on preparing and sending the newsletter will have been lost. If your IP address has been blacklisted, your emails will bounce and never get delivered. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) try to control spam by managing blacklists of senders who have developed poor reputations.

In her September 2012 article, “Avoid the Spam Folder,” Judith Aquino lists the common blacklist holders:

• CBL
• SpamHaus
• SORBS
• SpamCop

Among the data these blacklists track are spam complaints, unsubscribe rates, age of the sender’s IP address and number of invalid recipients. For this reason, many Email Service Providers explicitly forbid purchased lists and require double opt-ins on email distribution lists. And emails with subject lines that include words such as free, instant, or exclamation marks will likely be blocked.

Find Your Deliverability Score

There are a number of online tools that can help companies monitor the health of their domain name reputation when it comes to email. Acquino’s recommended list includes:

• AOL Postmaster Reputation Checker
• Barracuda Reputation
• Sender Score
• McAfee’s Trusted Source