In a nutshell, our Sender Score is awarded based on how well we follow email marketing best practices by avoiding SPAM-type messages and ensuring that we have the correct opt-in processes in place.
Which factors can harm email deliverability?
Within email marketing, the acronym ISP’ refers to the major email providers: Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc. If we want to avoid the dreaded junk folder, we need to keep these ISPs happy! Over 100 billion spam messages are sent daily so ISPs need to be on top of their game to filter them out and it’s our job to help them figure out that ours is a non-spammy communication.
How to avoid email deliverability issues
Set up DMARC, DKIM, SPF Authentication
Prevent emails from being blocked or sent to spam by publishing a DMARC record. This allows a sender to indicate that their messages are protected by SPF and/or DKIM, and tells a receiver what to do if neither of those authentication methods passes – such as to send to junk or reject the message.
To achieve the best deliverability, each domain that we want to use to send emails needs a domain key (DKIM). This is generated in Pardot and is an email authentication technique that allows the receiver to check that an email was actually sent and authorised by the domain owner.
An SPF record lists all authorised hostnames or IP addresses that are permitted to send email on behalf of your domain. This validates the email and reduces the risk of it landing in spam.
There are different types of top-level domains (TLD). The most recognised are probably .com, .org and .net and on top of this we have country code code top-level domains for example .co.uk, .us, .de.
Each TLD has a reputation and not only can this harm your search engine visibility but also your email sender score. Spamhaus calculates a badness index’ for each TLD which can be checked here.
The TLD alone won’t necessarily cause our emails to be dominican republic country code seen as spam, however, it can contribute to a lower score and when combined with other negative factors the overall score could result in the email not reaching the inbox.
Where possible, try to send emails from a domain that uses one of the following, most trustworthy suffixes: com, co, net, org, edu, gov.
How to identify if there is an issue
Pardot Advanced Email Analytics (available in: Pardot Plus, Advanced, and Premium Editions and for an additional cost in: Pardot Growth Edition) enables us to carry out a spam analysis of our email content.
Pardot tests email content against most major desktop and server-side spam filters, including: Barracuda, Outlook, Gmail, Sender ID, GMX, Sender Policy Framework, Mail.com and SpamAssassin. Where possible, Pardot will give a reason for the score.
1. Run a spam analysis
To start a new test for spam analysis:
From within the email template, navigate to the test tab and press + New Render’. You will receive an email notification when your email test is ready to be viewed. Email tests are located under Marketing > Emails > Email Tests.
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