You sent a price offer, but the client says "the email never arrived". Then it turns out it's in the spam folder. The reason is often not the email itself, but your domain's email reputation. In this article we explain in plain language what reputation is, what damages it and how to protect it.
What is email reputation?
Email services like Gmail, Outlook and Yandex give every sender a hidden "trust score". It's based on the past behavior of your domain and of the server (IP address) your emails are sent from: are your emails opened, are they marked as spam, do the addresses exist, are the technical settings correct. If the score is high, emails land in the "Inbox". If it's low, they go to spam or don't arrive at all.
Why does it matter?
The most important part of business correspondence goes by email: price offers, contracts, invoices, order confirmations. When reputation drops, not only marketing emails but regular work emails start landing in spam too. And restoring a damaged reputation takes weeks, sometimes months.
The technical foundation: SPF, DKIM and DMARC
These three records live in your domain's DNS settings and tell email services "this email really comes from this company".
- SPF - a list of the servers allowed to send email on behalf of your domain. Emails from servers not on the list are treated with suspicion.
- DKIM - a digital signature added to every email. It proves the email wasn't altered on the way.
- DMARC - a rule telling what to do with emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks: nothing, send to spam, or reject. It also lets you receive reports on who is sending email from your domain.
Since 2024, Gmail and Yahoo require all three of these settings from bulk senders. Even for small companies, this is no longer "nice to have" but the essential minimum.
Don't switch DMARC to a strict policy right away. Start with p=none (monitoring only), review the reports, make sure all your services (website form, CRM, invoicing software) are configured correctly, then move to quarantine and later to reject.
What damages reputation?
- Bought or outdated address lists. Emails sent to non-existent addresses bounce back, and this is the fastest-acting damage factor.
- Spam complaints. If recipients press "Spam", the score drops fast. For Gmail, a complaint rate below 0.3% is recommended.
- Sending lots of emails at once. Sending thousands of emails in a day from a new domain or after a long pause raises suspicion.
- Hard-to-find unsubscribe. Marketing emails without an unsubscribe link are marked as spam more often.
- A hacked mailbox. Spam sent from a mailbox taken over because of a weak password lowers the whole domain's reputation.
- Free or shared servers. If others send spam from the same IP address, your emails can suffer too.
8 rules to protect your reputation
- Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and update them whenever you add a new service.
- Send marketing emails only to people who gave you permission - don't buy address lists.
- Clean bounced addresses and long-inactive recipients from your list.
- Add a clear "unsubscribe" link to marketing and newsletter emails.
- Separate bulk sending from work correspondence - for example, use a separate subdomain (news.yourcompany.com) for newsletters.
- Increase sending volume gradually on a new domain ("warm-up").
- Use strong passwords and two-factor authentication on all mailboxes.
- Avoid emails that are just images or full of links; avoid phrases like "FREE!!!" in the subject line.
How to check your reputation
- Google Postmaster Tools - shows the reputation and spam rate of the emails you send to Gmail.
- MXToolbox - checks your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records and whether your domain is on blacklists.
- Mail-tester - send a test email and get its spam likelihood scored out of 10.
If your domain has landed on a blacklist, first remove the cause (for example, close the hacked mailbox), then submit a removal request through that blacklist's website.
Conclusion
Email reputation is an invisible brand asset that works every day. Building it means one-time correct technical setup followed by a few simple rules. When setting up business email, always ask whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC are included - at MONARX these settings come with every business email setup.