Is there anything more frustrating that assembling a killer email campaign, sending it off and hitting spam folders instead of inboxes?

The likely culprit: sender reputation.

Sender reputation is a score that you get assigned by spam appliances. It goes up to 100, and when it takes a hit, so does your email delivery rate.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to do things to get your score penalized. Don’t worry, though. Follow the 8 steps below and you’ll be well on your way to maintaining a top-notch sender score – and getting your campaigns into inboxes, where they can generate new leads.

Make Unsubscribing Easy

The number one thing that will cause you to lose sender score is getting flagged as spam. That happens when, for example, a cold contact can’t find a way to opt out of further messages – because flagging it as spam will generally also consign further campaigns into their spam folder no matter what you do.

Not only does it hurt your delivery rate in general, but contacts that flag you as spam are also clearly not who you want to be sending marketing campaigns to in the first place.

Here’s why: yes, you want as many contacts as possible. But you also want those contacts to be actively engaged and interested in what you’re offering. An easy, clear unsubscribe button or link can head off a lot of those problems.

Plus, a clear and functional unsubscribe option is required for CAN-SPAM compliance!

Actually Remove Those Unsubscribers

When someone opts out of email, go remove them immediately. If you’ve got that automated, go double-check it. You want opt-outs 100% gone from your list before you send another campaign, otherwise you’re just asking for a spam complaint.

It’s also always a good idea to keep your list as fresh and pruned as possible. It’s like a plant: removing opt-outs is just like trimming dead leaves. Those contacts weren’t going to bring you any value anyway, and your list (and delivery rate) is better off without them.

Also Remove Hard Bounces

Seeing a pattern yet? List management is critical to maintaining high delivery rate. If you send huge campaigns that hit hundreds of thousands of contacts, but a big portion of those contacts hard-bounce, that’s okay. If you send to those addresses again, after hard-bouncing, you’re causing trouble for your sender score.

Why? A big send that hits the same hard-bounced addresses repeatedly indicates to spam filters that you don’t maintain your list or pay attention to who you’re sending to, which is a red flag for spammers.

There are two types of bounce: hard and soft. In both cases, your email couldn’t be delivered to the recipient.

Soft bounces are temporary delivery failures, with causes that will likely be remedied in time. One example would be if the recipient’s inbox is full. Once they clear it out, you’ll be able to deliver to them again.

Hard bounces are permanent delivery failures, such as when the recipient closes their email account, or there’s an inaccuracy in the address. These addresses will, for whatever the reason, never receive your campaigns. Axe them like you would an opt-out.

Write Real Subject Lines

Clickbait style subject lines won’t do you any favors. If you trick people into opening your email, you might get a higher open rate – but you’ll just end up with more opt-outs and/or spam complaints. Your subject lines should clearly communicate what the contact will find when they open your email. Transparency is key!

By all means, use a nice, modern marketing-speak subject line. However, ensure that it’s directly relevant to the content of your campaign.

A lot of the factors involved in your sender reputation are based on your recipients’ behavior: clicks, opens, spam reports, etc. Make sure your campaigns are genuinely interesting and valuable!

Use Segmentation

The whole point of email marketing is to get your message to the right contacts. It’s critical that you send to well-targeted lists.

Break out your lists in a way that makes sense to your needs. Segmenting your contacts into, for example, various buyer personas will allow you to craft more personalized campaigns that resonate with more people.

Cold email campaigns’ greatest strength is their scalability, but that doesn’t mean you need to send to all those contacts in one go. Split them up into smaller segments that you can focus your messaging on.

Don’t Lose Sight of Your Reputation.

While you’re working hard on your email delivery, remember to check your reputation regularly! It’s important to know how your efforts are impacting your score.

Keep track of what you did and when, and what impact it had on your campaign performance and sender score.

Analyze Your Data

Sender score isn’t the alpha and omega when it comes to email delivery. It’s important, but it’s not all-encompassing. You should always monitor all the metrics you can get your hands on!

Is your email being delivered? How many inboxes did you actually reach? How many people opened a campaign, or opted out? Did people click through to your landing page and convert?

Just like any marketing channel, email is ripe for improvement whenever you dig deep enough into the data. You’ll find opportunities and ideas!

Use the Right Software

Generating new B2B leads via email is challenging, no question. Thankfully, Email Lead Generation software exists to take most of the load off your shoulders.

When your software automatically cleans your list, protects your domain and IP, cleans and validates your contact lists, and audits your content for deliverability factors, you can focus on writing campaigns and generating leads.