What's your Mailbox Reputation Score?

Your mailboxes’ reputation might be tanking your campaigns 😨

When it comes to cold email success, mailbox reputation is the unsung hero. It’s what ensures your emails make it to the inbox instead of getting buried in the spam folder. With the new Mailbox Reputation Score in Salesforge, you can now monitor your mailbox health and take proactive steps to safeguard deliverability.

Here are the top 5 ways to improve your mailbox reputation and make the most of this new feature:

1. Monitor your Mailbox Reputation Score regularly

Staying on top of your reputation score is the first step to maintaining high deliverability. Salesforge’s Mailbox Reputation Score offers an easy-to-understand evaluation of your mailbox health. By checking it regularly, you can quickly identify issues like spam complaints or high bounce rates before they affect your campaigns.

💡 Set a weekly reminder to review your score. A small, consistent dip might signal issues like poor targeting or over-sending, while a steep decline indicates immediate action is needed.

2. Limit your daily sending volume

Sending too many emails at once is a surefire way to damage your reputation. Email providers monitor sending volume, and sudden spikes can raise red flags, leading to reduced inbox placement. Start small with a low volume and scale up gradually to avoid triggering spam filters.

💡Never exceed the recommended daily limit for your mailbox. For new mailboxes, stay well below 30 emails per day and increase gradually over several weeks.

3. Rotate domains to spread the risk

Even with careful monitoring, mailboxes can sometimes face reputation issues. That’s where domain rotation comes into play. By using multiple domains for your campaigns, you reduce the risk of overloading a single domain and keep your main domain safe. Email providers assess the reputation of individual domains. Spreading your campaigns across multiple domains keeps any single one from being flagged for overuse.

4. Give mailboxes time to recover

When your Mailbox Reputation Score drops, sometimes the best action is no action at all. Letting a mailbox rest allows its reputation to recover naturally. This is especially important if your score indicates consistent deliverability issues. Pause sending from that mailbox for a week or two while you focus on improving your targeting or warming up additional mailboxes.

💡During this downtime, focus on activities like refreshing your email list, rewriting copy, or testing subject lines with other mailboxes.

5. Authenticate your domains

Domain authentication is the backbone of email reputation. Ensuring your domain has proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records improves your sender credibility and protects against phishing or spoofing attempts that can harm your reputation.

Check out our Master Deliverability Checklist.

Why this matters:

A strong mailbox reputation doesn’t just keep your emails out of the spam folder - it directly impacts every aspect of your cold email strategy:

• Better deliverability: As obvious as it is, a strong mailbox reputation means better deliverability and that improves the chances of your messages landing in the primary inbox.

• Improved reply rates: A well-maintained reputation signals trustworthiness to recipients.

• Better ROI: Fewer bounces and higher engagement mean more value from every campaign.