The sender reputation in Smart.pr

Since we started Smart.pr in 2008, literally millions of press releases have been sent through our application. In this era of big data, we felt it was about time we let these numbers speak. This blogpost explains why we believe that monitoring sender reputation is important, how this reputation is calculated in Smart.pr and therefore: how you might be able to improve yours. And although there is power in numbers, data is nothing without human insight. Enjoy.

What is sender reputation?

When we talk about sender reputation, we focus on your “numbers” only. The numbers in this case are the aggregate click rates of your emails’ recipients: the percentages of your emails that have been clicked, opened, plainly sent, have failed, that have been unsubscribed to, or that have been reported as spam by their recipients. Together, and measured relative to the total emails you send, these figures determine your sender reputation.

Why monitor sender reputation?

When calculated right, these aggregate click rates and thus your sender reputation can give you huge insights. This hopefully helps you improve your colleague’s and company’s PR efforts over time. Because as a Smart.pr user you probably want your press releases to be delivered. And not only delivered, but opened, read and clicked. This is why we monitor it. To help you improve. Now that is the upside.

There’s also a downside. Generally speaking, this relates to spamming. Everybody is familiar with spam, we all know how annoying a stuffed inbox is. Luckily, worldwide spamming policies are tightening. Internet moguls like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft take a stand in unison and their policies should make sure our inboxes stay clean. As a recipient of email (and spam): hooray! As a sender within the Smart.pr platform: something to always be aware of. The fact that worldwide policies are tightening basically means there’s no escape: in case you want to keep ending up in peoples inboxes (and that is what you want), your sender reputation needs to be solid. Fair deal, we think!

Let’s give a brief example here.. Your sender reputation determines in the end the deliverability of all email you send. So in case your IP address was linked to a lot of unsubscribes last month, this month all of your email traffic will be marked as more likely to contain spam for its recipients. And therefore will not be delivered. Do this a few months in a row and you will be blacklisted, making it impossible to deliver email for a long time. This is a risk you want to mitigate.

Right. So all the more reason to be aware of your sender reputation.

What sender reputation is not

Of all the press releases sent through Smart.pr, some are great, others no doubt have ample room for improvement. Much of this is driven by the content of these press releases. This is something we need to leave out of the equation here, as we do not index, track or label your press releases regarding what is written in them.

Obviously this is too bad, as content determines a great deal here. But as long as we are not willing/able to track this and as long as you send stuff that people actually want, we should be good. Another thing that the sender reputation is not about, are your email settings. For example, the white labeling of your email domain’s DNS records is a technical angle you may take to improve your generic email deliverability. This is because after white labeling, you send email from your own subdomain.

Although we can assist you in taking the steps to carry out this procedure, this strategy is out of the scope of this blog post. So in everything that follows: please leave out PR content and white labeling options.

How we calculate sender reputation

For those of you that not only want to know why sender reputation is relevant, but also want to know how it is calculated, please read on.

Below you’ll find a basic breakdown of how we calculate the sender reputation. This holds for both individual Smart.pr senders as for your company as a whole (comprised of all senders).

In this blog post we only describe the general dynamics. As the reputation formulas are continuously optimised, we do not share a finite version here (as there is none). Upon request a more detailed version is available,with the very latest adaptations.

Calculating the sender reputation

First of all, The sender reputation should be up-to-date: this is why we calculate a running metric for a client or sender over the past 90 days.

Second, the overall reputation score consists of 5 factors, calculated individually. We believe these factors best reflect a recipient’s behaviour upon receiving an email:

• Clicked (e.g. to download an attachment)

• Opened (to read the email)

• No action (the email is delivered but nothing is done with it)

• Failed (when the email cannot be delivered at all)

• Unsubscribed (mail was indeed delivered and opened, but the recipient actively chose to unsubscribe from your news).

Third, we calculate each of these metrics individually before aggregating them into the final overall sender reputation. Therefore, for each metric we determined thresholds to qualify what is considered excellent, good, fair and poor performance. This is based on industry standards and our own experience (i.e. the aggregate click rates and reputations of Smart.pr clients over time). Depending on where the metric falls within the thresholds, to each metric (click, open, sent, fail, opt-out) a score is given between 0.0 and 1.0.

Lastly, the overall sender reputation is a weighted average mean of the individual scores earned for each metric. A general explanation for the weights is as follows: clicks are a conscious recipient action and thus are a good indicator that someone likes your news. Due to inbox settings (auto-opens e.g.), opens are a less reliable indicator and have a lower positive weight. That an email is delivered does not tell a lot in itself. So this outcome is not weighed in the equation. Fails on the other hand are an indicator of wrong email addresses and are therefore weighed negatively. Lastly, opt-outs are also a conscious action and a strong indicator of irrelevance or spam. Just as Google and the other moguls mentioned before, we dislike spam period. It hurts the PR/journalist relationship and it must be weighed the heaviest.

Please look for pointers: the devil is in the detail

In this final reputation score you might miss out on some details, so please take a look at the table with specific figures per metric too. Here you’ll find a breakdown of your click rates. This should give you plenty of ideas on how to improve your sender reputation. Because in the final score, compensation of course takes place: a ton of clicks may blur a fail rate that is actually not too well. We constructed the overall formula in such a way that you should not miss a beat, but always beware that the devil is in the detail…

A brief example: should your sender reputation be poor, please look at the table in the app and look for pointers. In case many of your emails fail to be delivered, this most likely is the reason for a reputation that needs improvement. Opt-outs are an even harder indicator that something is not right. You most likely could improve by doing more research on the journalists you reach out to and your address book could be in need of an update.

On the other hand, in case your sender reputation is good but you want to strive for excellence, dig in! It might be the case that you can lower your unsubscribe rate even more, do more research to optimize your press lists (and shrink that fail rate) or make your content so incredibly attractive that your click rates will go through the roof!

Whatever the case: we hope to help you gain insight in your PR efforts and mitigate spamming risks by sharing the sender reputation.

Please let us know what you think by reaching out to support@smart.pr (opens in new tab).

We’re happy to hear your thoughts!

<3

Team Smart.pr

Image by Markus Spiske