How to delist from Sender Score Reputation Network
Having one’s IP address flagged for any reason is no good news, especially when the reason behind it is not clear. One of these blacklists, the Return Path Blocklist hosted by the Sender Score Reputation Network, ranks IP addresses based on Sender Score –a measure of its reputation. When a sender score is low, then the IP address may be blacklisted, and emails from that IP are not delivered. If your IP address has been blacklisted, here’s how to delist from Sender Score Reputation Network
What is a Sender Score?
Before going on to talk about how to delist from Sender Score Reputation Network, it’ll make sense to first look at what the Sender score is all about. This is a score in the range of 0 to 100, ranking the reputation of an IP address from 0 (as the worst) to 100 (as excellent). This information is gathered from Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and recipients’ responses to emails from that IP address i.e., emails from that IP are frequently being tagged as spam. This score is calculated over an average of thirty days.
What causes a low Sender Score?
Now that we have seen what a sender score is let’s look at the things that may lead to a low sender score.
- Number of mails: This is considered when comparing the complaints to the total number of emails
- Numerous complaints: Means there are too many complaints to an IP address when compared to the number of accepted emails
- General reputation: This refers to the presence of an IP on other blacklists or whitelist (apart from Return Path Blocklist)
- Rejected emails: This refers to the emails that are rejected by the ISP providers due to policy reasons or spam traps.
- Unknown users: These are non-existent email addresses, and when there are lots of messages sent from an IP address to these addresses
What is Sender Score too low?
The truth is, it’s hard to say what exact score guarantees that emails from an address will be delivered. This is because it is dependent on two things;
- The receiver: which may, in his own will, decide what sender score is acceptable to him or her.
- The ISPs: may use the Sender Score to filter out some messages. In some cases, they limit the number of messages that can be received from an IP address with a certain Sender Score within a period (referred to as throttling)
How to Know if an IP is blacklisted by Sender Score Reputation Network
The first step on how to delist from a Sender Score Reputation Network is to confirm whether the IP address has been blacklisted. This would mean checking the IP address on Return Path Blocklist (RPBL), which is quite a straightforward process; just visit the Return Path Blocklist lookup site; www.senderscore.org/blocklist/lookup/ and fill in the IP address, the email, and the other details.
This runs a search and lets you know whether the email has your IP address blacklisted or not. But note; that this is not in direct reflection of the Sender Score, but it depends on the email address.
Why you should delist from Sender Score Reputation Network
Once blacklisted by the Sender Score Reputation Network, all emails from that IP address are either rejected by the ISP or the recipient’s email address or end up spam box. This then increases the number of rejected emails from the sender’s IP address, further lowering the Sender Score, and the cycle continues.
Things to do before delisting from Sender Score Reputation Network
Before delisting from Sender Score Reputation Network, it is best to rectify the problems that led to being a low Sender Score and subsequent blacklisting. This includes:
- Assessing network security for viruses; this should be rectified if it is the source of the problem.
- Getting the IP address delisted from other blacklists: as earlier mentioned, this can lead to a low Sender Score.
- Sorting out problems that may lead to messages being flagged as spam, either by the recipient or the ISPs
- Sanitizing the list of email recipients; this is another reason for a low Sender Score, and it is best to avoid sending messages to email addresses that don’t exist.
Steps to Delist from Sender Score Reputation Network
After fixing up one’s network and all other problems that lead to blacklisting, the best answer on how to delist from Sender Score Reputation Network is to contact the web administrator for delisting. But the emphasis remains that all issues must first be sorted because even after delisting, an IP address can be blacklisted again.
It is also worthy of note that after delisting, emails from the IP address may not get to the recipient’s inbox if the Sender Score remains too low i.e., below the set point by the recipient or the ISPs. Hence, the ultimate objective is to maintain a good Sender Score, as has been discussed above.
How to prevent being delisted again
To avoid having to worry about how to delist from Sender Score Reputation Network again, there are a few things to put in place; they are
- Check your Sender Score: This is a free service and is readily available on the internet, and it’s a useful tool for users to know the chances of their messages ending in the spam or being rejected completely.
- Keep a Reputation Monitor: this is a paid service that allows users to keep a track of their reputation as perceived by email recipients and ISPs and goes ahead to tell them on ways to improve their ‘reputation’.
Final Words
An IP address can be blacklisted for a wide range of reasons which is then cumulated into a Sender Score (from 0 to 100), hence a low Sender score increases the likelihood of being blacklisted. The best way how to delist from Sender Score Reputation Network is to clarify the problems leading to the low score, sanitize the network system and then contact the web administrator. Once delisted, the user should then focus his or her attention on keeping a good Sender Score (reputation).
