Return Path Launches Free E-mail Reputation Search Service
Thursday, 14 December 2006
Return Path, an e-mail management company, has published comprehensive corporate e-mail reputation data online at www.SenderScore.org and is offering it to businesses at no cost.
SenderScore.org provides companies with an overall view of how ISPs and other e-mail receivers think of their e-mail program and provides relevant data about delivery-hindering reputation factors such as complaints, infrastructure and bounces.
This data is a segment of the e-mail reputation data available through Return Path’s Sender Score Reputation Monitor, which aggregates e-mail reputation data from dozens of ISPs and filtering companies down to the campaign level.
A recent Return Path study showed that 83 percent of e-mail delivery failures are because of reputation, with only 17 percent attributed to content and other non-reputation factors.
Using SenderScore.org, e-mail senders can get their Sender Score, which is indicative of e-mail reputation quality. Scores range from 0-100, with 100 being the best. Other information available includes data on spam complaints, e-mail volume tracking, bounce rates, blacklist and whitelist inclusions, spam trap hits and authentication status.
“When e-mail does not reach the inbox, it is usually because the sender has a bad e-mail reputation,” says George Bilbrey, vice president and general manager of Return Path’s Delivery Assurance Solutions division. “Companies spend so much time thinking about creative that they ignore factors that really matter when an ISP is determining whether their e-mail will go into the junk folder or get blocked. With the information at SenderScore.org, any company can see what areas of their e-mail program are causing problems.”
Craig Spiezle, director of business planning and strategy for Microsoft’s Windows Live Safety group, says: “Companies need to be vigilant about their e-mail reputations. Reputation, when applied to validating a sender’s identity via Sender ID, is growing in importance in how Microsoft, the industry and corporate networks are improving the deliverability of legitimate e-mail, keeping spam from user’s inboxes and protecting users from malicious online threats.”
For full reputation reports down to the campaign level, companies can subscribe to Return Path’s Sender Score Reputation Monitor service for a monthly fee. Sender Score Reputation Monitor is the only reputation service that aggregates data from ISPs and filtering companies to give a full-view of e-mail reputation. Return Path is already tracking data on more than 25 million IP addresses through its network that covers more than 60 million inboxes from a variety of ISPs and filtering companies.
“We are making this information available at no cost so that all companies sending e-mail can start to understand the importance of monitoring and improving their e-mail reputation,” Bilbrey says. “In the past, reputation has been hard for companies to track. Now, there is a quick and easy online way to find e-mail reputation data.”
SenderScore.org is also a receiver tool that can be used in filtering decisions. Several ISPs use the Sender Score system as part of their e-mail filtering process today through an automated data sharing process, and now receivers can also look up individual sender reputation data as needed.
“Several receivers are already using Sender Score data in their filtering decisions, making it even more important for senders to know their score and underlying e-mail reputation issues,” Bilbrey says.