Sender Score Certified™: The Leader in Email Accreditation

Email accreditation programs like Sender Score Certified are the latest development in the war against spam, phishing and online fraud. This paper discusses how accreditation programs complement existing authentication and reputation standards, who benefits from Sender Score Certified and what it takes to become a Sender Score Certified member.

Why Accreditation?

Most experts agree that spam accounts for a huge percentage of email sent and that volumes continue to rise. These huge volumes of spam frustrate consumers but also create serious problems for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email marketers. Most anti-spam solutions are designed to reduce the overall volume of email rather than differentiate between spam and permission-based messages. This has led to an alarming number of .false positives. or legitimate messages that are inadvertently blocked and filtered. A 2005 study from Return Path found that more than 20% of permission-based email was blocked or filtered . and this situation offers no benefits for consumers, legitimate marketers or ISPs. What if the leading ISPs automatically knew your email was legitimate before running it through their various spam filtering mechanisms? What if ISPs would guarantee the delivery of your email to the inbox? Email accreditation programs are designed to provide senders, receivers (ISPs) and consumers with a trusted solution. Accreditation programs like Sender Score Certified ensure that legitimate email gets delivered, while allowing ISPs to aggressively target spam without the concern of blocking the permission-based email consumers want.

How does accreditation fit in with authentication and reputation?

Email marketing is a complex business and you must navigate multiple issues, tactics and technologies to get your permission-based offer to your subscribers. inbox. To date the most deliverability solutions have focused on technology OR practices. Accreditation is unique because it combines these two critical components of success into a single solution. Accredited senders are evaluated on their technical infrastructure, mailing practices and overall sending reputation. Once accepted into the program, all of these factors are closely monitored and senders are penalized if they fall below preset program standards. Establishing email authentication protocols and maintaining a good reputation are pre-conditions for acceptance into any accreditation program.

What is Sender Score Certified?

Sender Score Certified is the only email accreditation program (or whitelist) with deep corporate and consumer market coverage. When accredited through Sender Score Certified, senders reduce filtering risk and increase delivery rates at more than 600 million email inboxes. Top internet services providers such as MSN, Windows Live Hotmail and Roadrunner use Sender Score Certified in filtering decisions, along with thousands of corporate domains and leading filtering solutions such as Spam Assassin, IronPort Systems and Barracuda Networks. ISPs and filtering companies rely on Sender Score Certified to protect more than 40 percent of all email inboxes, including 67 percent of all consumer inboxes, and query the Sender Score Certified whitelist more than 5 billion times per day.

How does Sender Score Certified work?

Email senders and receivers both participate in Sender Score Certified. Once a sender is accepted, their outgoing email IP addresses are added to the Sender Score Certified whitelist. When an email is sent, the receiving ISP or corporation performs a standard DNS query on the sending IP address, if the IP is on the whitelist, the email is delivered to the inbox. There are no technical adjustments, software installations or other set-up requirements once your email program has been certified by Sender Score.

How do I get on the Sencer Score Certified Whitelist?

To gain accreditation, email senders must adhere to a strict set of industry standards for email communication originally established in partnership with TRUSTe, an independent, non-profit organization dedicated protecting consumers. online privacy. Today, Return Path certifies senders, provides oversight and dispute resolution services while monitoring complaint rates and auditing compliance with program standards.

Once accepted, permission-based email senders pay an annual license fee and agree to subject their email sending metrics to rigorous monitoring across key reputation metrics including complaint rates, unknown user rates, spam traps and blacklists. Return Path will penalize senders whose reputation scores fail to meet the program standards. If any of the program standards rise above a certain threshold over a specified period of time, the sending IP address will be suspended and could lose their certification.

This program is an ideal solution for differentiating legitimate email from spam because no spammer would ever qualify under the program.s strict guidelines. If a spammer somehow was certified, their high complaint and unknown user rates would quickly disqualify them. The program standards are high so only senders who maintain strong reputation scores across all their sending domains can gain acceptance and retain their status as an accredited sender.

What are the benefits for my email program?

A recent study by Return Path found that Sender Score Certified members experienced a 21% lift in overall delivery rates. Each percentage lift in delivery rates translates into increased program revenue and in many cases, significant savings. For example, at CNET Networks Inc. where they email more than 100 million newsletters per month to subscribers, their revenues depend on users receiving those email newsletters. After qualifying for Sender Score Certified, they saw a 15% improvement in their delivery. In addition, they found their ISP relations to be greatly simplified. Sender Score Certified was easy to implement and their email newsletters were no longer lost in the mix. Using typical email costs, their delivery improvements translated to a savings of $900,000, providing an incredible return on investment.

Along with the obvious financial advantages of improved inbox delivery, Microsoft recently announced that Sender Score Certified members will receive additional privileges when sending to Windows Live Mail users. The most significant is that images and links will be enabled by default for email sent from active, certified IP addresses. This means that Sender Score Certified senders can move past the challenges around rendering and image suppression that plague most email marketers.

A second benefit for accredited senders is the inclusion of an .unsubscribe. button within the Windows Live Mail interface. Marketers have spent years advocating for a universal unsubscribe button . either instead of or in addition to the .report spam. button so subscribers may opt-out instead of just reporting a complaint. Microsoft is one of the first ISPs to offer this feature and it is significant that will only be available to Sender Score Certified program members.

Finally, Sender Score Certified IP addresses will not be subjected to the hourly throttling limits and will receive more lenient daily throttling limits at Windows Live Mail. So as an accredited sender you can deploy campaigns to your Hotmail subscribers at the speed and pace that makes sense for your business.

Am I qualified for Sender Score Certified?

Acceptance requires a thorough examination of your email infrastructure, email list quality, collection and unsubscribe processes. A good starting point for most businesses is to honestly answer the following questions:

If you can answer .yes. to some or all of these questions, your business may well be qualified for Sender Score Certified. To apply, visit http://www.senderscorecertified.com/apply.

What if I don't qualify but still want to be on the Whitelist?

If you know your email program will not qualify, Return Path offers a range of audits and improvement plans that can get your email program on the right track. It.s not easy but with the help of our deliverability experts we can diagnose the root cause(s) of the metrics that are driving down your reputation . and design practical solutions for your business. To learn more about our deliverability consulting services, please visit: http://www.senderscore.com/consulting.php