5 Top Tools For IP Reputation Check: To monitor and improve your email delivery, you must follow email marketing best practices.
This guide will help you if you don’t understand the meaning of this sentence.
- What IP reputation is and why it’s important
- Some of the most reliable IP reputation checkers available
- Tips to improve IP reputation
What is IP Address Reputation?
IP reputation measures the trustworthiness and behavioral quality of an IP address.
An example: If an IP address sends spam-free emails on a regular basis, it will get a “good” reputation score. However, IP addresses that send bulk spam, or are associated with malware, will get a low IP reputation.
Why is IP Reputation Important?
It is crucial to have a good IP reputation as it will affect email delivery. If your IP reputation is poor, your email campaigns will not reach your subscribers’ inboxes. Or they will be sent to the spam folder.
Let’s continue to explain.
Each device connected to the Internet has an IP Address. This applies to any device on the Internet, whether it is a computer or an email server. These email service providers (ESPs), use servers to send emails to users who are using email marketing services . These servers are assigned an IP address.
Outlook and Gmail both “judge” whether an email is legitimate or not by looking at the reputation of the IP. Guess what?
It’s great if your IP has a good reputation. Your email campaigns are delivered to the mail servers smoothly, and you’re not considered spammer. To detect potential changes in IP reputation, you need to keep checking it regularly. A good time frame is once a month.
Conversely, clients with low IP reputation may perceive your emails as spam, phishing, or malicious attempts. Your campaigns will face delivery issues.
In a nutshell: Without a good reputation for your IP address, your email marketing efforts could be going sour or you might not get the ROI that email marketing promises.
5 Best IP Reputation Checkers
It may seem difficult to find out your IP reputation, but there are many tools that can help you identify and understand your IP address reputation.
A reputation checker for IPs will help you identify potential delivery issues that your IP might be causing. Let’s now take a closer look at the tools!
1. Sender Score
Sender score is one of the most widely used tools for checking IP reputation. This tool assesses the health of your mail software. It assigns a number between zero and 100 which shows how mailbox providers view your IP address. The score you receive is indicative of how good your IP reputation.
If your score is between 70 and 0 it indicates that your email will be heavily filtered. You need to take steps to correct this. Scores above 70 indicate that your email will be subject to less/minimal filtering.
This calculation is based upon a rolling 30-day average.
2. Talos
Talos, a tool that allows you to check the reputation of your IP address, is offered by Cisco. You can enter your IP address or domain to verify your reputation. The service links your “web reputation” to messages sent across multiple IP addresses.
Other email service providers will judge your IP or domain reputation as either Good, Neutral or Poor. It is a good sign that your reputation is strong. If your reputation is poor, it means that not all of your emails get delivered to your inbox. Neutral means that your domain is in need of improvement (low volume).
3. Google Postmaster Tools
Google offers Postmaster tools to help you analyze your email performance. You can see which emails are being delivered and which ones aren’t. You can also find IP and domain reputation checks and Gmail delivery errors. Last but not the least, Google shares information about spam reports, authentication and email encryption.
4. Barracuda Central
Barracuda Central has a real-time database that tracks IP addresses with a poor reputation for valid email delivery. This IP reputation service analyzes the send history of IP addresses to determine if legitimate messages are coming from them. Based on an IP address, the Barracuda Spam and Viral Firewall can either deny or permit an email.
5. Cyren IP Reputation Check
Cyren IP Rating Check is an useful tool that tracks and identifies IP addresses, and ranks them according their reputation. Although it only provides basic information, it can show you the risk of receiving emails from certain IP addresses. It doesn’t offer any suggestions to improve your IP reputation.
Rest assured! All these options will be discussed in the section below.
How to Improve IP Reputation
It may take time to repair a negative IP reputation, but it is important to take the necessary steps to build trustworthiness.
Here are some steps that you can take to increase your email deliverability and reputation.
1. Regularly clean your email list
Many business owners and marketers are tempted by the temptation to have a large list of email subscribers. This is not a good idea and can cause more harm than good. You must remove unresponsive, inactive and unengaged emails addresses from your email list.
You can also set up an automated sequence in your email marketing platform to clean out your list automatically.
Email List Cleaning can also be helpful in detecting and eliminating Spam Traps.
2. Use double opt-in
Double opt in This is asking subscribers to confirm their subscription. This will allow you to confirm that your subscribers are interested in your brand and content, and not just for testing purposes.
This is a great way to keep your email list healthy and it shows ISPs that users want to receive your content.
3. Warm up your IP
Warm up your IP if you intend to send large volumes of email. This will help you build a good reputation. This is a gradual increase in your email sending, not a sudden surge of large-scale campaigns. ISPs may be alerted if you send too many emails to new subscribers.
4. Proofread your emails
If there are any grammatical errors or typos in an email, users may flag it as spam. It is important to proofread all emails before you send them. You can ask a colleague or use a grammar checker tool.
Spammy words and phrases can also trigger spam filters, alerting ISPs to divert your email to the spam folder.
5. Users can unsubscribe at any time
It can be disastrous to hide the unsubscribe button in your emails. This will only frustrate subscribers and cause them to search for the “report” button. Users can unsubscribe at any time. These users are not your ideal customers.
6. Use separate email servers
It is a smart idea to have different email servers for internal and external communications as well as your marketing needs. This will help you to protect your IP as well as improve its reputation.
7. Follow standard email protocols
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are email protocols that authenticate and verify to ISPs that the sender is authorized to send emails from a specific domain. These protocols can also be used to prevent impersonation attacks or email compromise.
FAQ
These are the top questions about IP reputation.
1. What does an IP reputation tester do?
A reputation checker for IP addresses allows you to see the quality of email coming from an IP address and also shows you any negative server behavior (blacklisting, filtering, etc.). Emails marked as spam/phishing are a result of user behavior.
2. How can I find out if my IP is blacklisted?
You don’t get notified if your domain or IP is blacklisted. Instead, you can investigate your own situation. You can check if your IP has been blacklisted using a tool such as MXToolbox to determine if it has.
