Domain reputation risk scoring is a critical factor in successful email deliverability. It influences how a message is scored by major mailbox providers and ISPs, making it more likely to reach the inbox rather than the junk folder. It’s also an important indicator of the overall health of your email program.

The good news is that you can proactively monitor your domain reputation with several tools and services. Many ESPs partner with tracking services and offer domain reputation scoring directly on their dashboards, while free online tools like Sender Score aggregate multiple receivers’ data to give you insight into your general status.

If you’re concerned about your domain reputation, it’s a good idea to check the results of some of these online tools on a regular basis (see this helpful blog post for more info). There are also a number of free and paid services that can help you find out whether you’ve been added to a blacklist or marked as spam. For example, Cisco’s Talos Intelligence is an easy-to-use service that provides a readout of your reputation based on information collected from multiple receivers.

Email Spam Tester Tools to Optimize Your Campaign Deliverability

As with all things, your domain reputation will fluctuate and may change if you introduce new activities such as sending campaigns, adding new subscribers or changing the way that you use your domain. Regular monitoring of your domain reputation with a combination of tools and services, including SPF/DKIM/DMARC, provider tools, seed testing and quantified inbox placement metrics can uncover trends and help you course correct before reputation takes a big hit.