What is Domain Reputation and Why Should You Care?

Domain reputation is a key piece of the email deliverability puzzle. It is essentially an email sender’s ‘credit score’ and requires active maintenance to keep it in the green. This article will walk through the basics of what it is, how to improve yours and why you should do so.

All devices on the internet communicate using IPQS domain reputation– long strings of mostly numbers. To make these easier to remember, humans use words and names that are translated to IP numbers by the domain name system (DNS). A branded domain gives you your own entry in this global phone book, and your domain reputation is what influences how much priority an ESP will give your emails when it comes to filtering decisions.

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The good news is that most email service providers are now weighing domain reputation more than IP reputation in their filtering decisions, and this trend will likely continue to grow. This is because domain reputation is more specific to your business and easier to keep track of, whereas IPs are dynamic and may change over time.

This is why it’s vital to warm up your IP and domain with a dedicated IP address before sending high volumes, and to only send to recipients who genuinely fit your TAM. It is also why it’s important to monitor your domain reputation over time so that you can react quickly if it starts to decline.