Domain-based Reputation: Closer than you think?

Early in 2009, an agency client of ours made a huge mistake. Our Deliverability team noticed an increase in the complaint rate for the mailing list of one of their clients--a national consumer brand that you've almost certainly heard of. Some investigation revealed that an employee of the agency had added purchased addresses to their mailing list.

Besides being a clear violation of our Terms of Service, using a purchased list is also a huge mistake for the reasons described here. So we demanded that the agency purge the bought list from our system, or else take their business elsewhere.

The agency complied, and all the bad addresses were removed, but their deliverability to the newly-cleansed mailing list continued to suffer. The reputation of their dedicated IP address had taken a severe hit because of the complaints from recipients who were emailed previously without having opted in.

Starting in January, the national brand began working with a new agency, also a Delivra client. Almost immediately, they saw a dramatic increase in deliverability. Below you'll see charts showing their November and December 2009 deliverability results, compared to the results to date for January 2010:

Delivery increase after change in From: domain

What changed? Not a lot. The mailing list didn't change much--remember, it had already been purged of the purchased addresses. The content was not markedly different--all their mailings for this period were scored similarly by SpamAssassin. Even the sending IP address remained the same. The only change was that the new agency selected a different From: address using a different domain.

We can't know with scientific certainty if the change in From: domain was responsible, in whole or in part, for the deliverability boost. Perhaps other factors, like the passage of time without additional recipient complaints, was a factor in the improvement. But the facts in evidence suggest at least the possibility that filtering based on domain reputation, predicted some time ago, is starting to take effect among ISPs.

Domain-based reputation means that, for marketers with deliverability problems, fixing them will not be as easy as leasing a dedicated IP address, or changing email service providers. And using a different domain isn't always going to be an option. So, are you ready to examine your opt-in and sending practices for the day when your reputation will follow you from one server to the next?

Chris Broshears | Product Development