What is email domain reputation and how is it measured?
Email domain reputation is a trust score mailbox providers assign your sending domain based on how recipients interact with your emails. It is measured through spam complaint rates (keep below 0.1%), bounce rates, engagement signals like opens and replies, and blacklist status checks. A strong reputation means your sequences land in primary inboxes across 500 to 5,000 prospects per month; a damaged one kills deliverability before a single qualified meeting gets booked.
Evidence and detail
- Google Postmaster Tools tracks domain reputation across four tiers: bad, low, medium, and high, updated daily.
- Spam complaint rates above 0.08% trigger inbox filtering at Gmail, directly reducing reply rates across active sequences.
- Third-party blacklist monitors like MXToolbox and Spamhaus list over 100 DNS blocklists that ISPs query on every inbound send.
Related reading
- /blog/how-to-warm-up-a-cold-outreach-domain
- /blog/email-deliverability-checklist-for-b2b-sequences
- /blog/spam-complaint-rate-benchmarks-cold-outreach
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