---
title: "Six Steps to Improve Your Sender Reputation"
description: "Sender reputation is the largely private assessment that inbox service providers such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo make before deciding where to deliver email. It reflects infrastructure compliance, sending history and consistency, list hygiene, mail frequency, and recipient engagement, with providers increasingly emphasizing domain reputation over IP reputation. The guide recommends six recovery steps: audit SPF, DKIM, and DMARC; warm up new domains gradually; identify provider-specific blocks or blocklists; clean and segment lists; make unsubscribing easy; and send valuable, mobile-friendly content. It also advises using double opt-in, monitoring engagement, bounce and spam responses, throttling, and DMARC reports, while tightening policies or requesting provider reviews after fixes. Because providers continually reevaluate senders, reputation management requires repeated observation, testing, and adjustment rather than a one-time repair."
---

# Six Steps to Improve Your Sender Reputation

[Resend](https://yomu.fyi/company/resend) · May 20, 2026

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

Sender reputation is the largely private assessment that inbox service providers such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo make before deciding where to deliver email. It reflects infrastructure compliance, sending history and consistency, list hygiene, mail frequency, and recipient engagement, with providers increasingly emphasizing domain reputation over IP reputation. The guide recommends six recovery steps: audit SPF, DKIM, and DMARC; warm up new domains gradually; identify provider-specific blocks or blocklists; clean and segment lists; make unsubscribing easy; and send valuable, mobile-friendly content. It also advises using double opt-in, monitoring engagement, bounce and spam responses, throttling, and DMARC reports, while tightening policies or requesting provider reviews after fixes. Because providers continually reevaluate senders, reputation management requires repeated observation, testing, and adjustment rather than a one-time repair.

## Context

The guide addresses email that lands in spam or is blocked by inbox providers. It explains that sender reputation depends on both email service provider infrastructure and the sender’s practices, including authentication, sending behavior, list quality, and recipient engagement.

## Approach / What changed

The prescribed recovery process starts with auditing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, then gradually warming new domains or subdomains. It continues by diagnosing provider-specific blocks and blocklists, cleaning and segmenting lists, improving signup verification and consent, making unsubscribing flexible and visible, and sending content with clear value. Monitoring engagement, bounces, spam responses, throttling, and DMARC reports supports ongoing adjustment.

## Takeaways

- Inbox providers evaluate infrastructure compliance, sending history, list hygiene, mail frequency, and recipient engagement; domain reputation is now emphasized more than IP reputation by most providers.
- New domains or subdomains should be warmed gradually, beginning campaigns with engaged recipients and monitoring engagement, bounces, spam responses, and ISP throttling.
- Visible unsubscribe links, flexible frequency or topic choices, double opt-in, and clean lists can reduce spam reports and support stronger recipient engagement.

## FAQ

### Which authentication records should an email campaign audit?

The guide identifies SPF and DKIM as required for email campaigns and says DMARC is effectively mandatory for professional campaigns. It recommends addressing internal compliance issues first, then tightening policies as compliance improves.

### How should a new sending domain be introduced?

A new domain or subdomain should be warmed up by gradually increasing email volume. New campaigns should begin with engaged readers, with expansion guided by inbox placement and observed engagement, bounce, spam, and throttling signals.

### Why make unsubscribing easier than reporting spam?

Recipients who cannot easily find an unsubscribe option may report unwanted messages as spam instead. The guide recommends visible unsubscribe links and flexible topic or frequency choices because fewer wanted emails are preferable to more ignored ones.

**Tags:** [Authentication](https://yomu.fyi/topic/authentication), [Deliverability](https://yomu.fyi/topic/deliverability), [Email Marketing](https://yomu.fyi/topic/email-marketing)

- Source: [Resend](https://resend.com/blog/6-steps-to-improve-your-sender-reputation-score)
- Source URL: https://resend.com/blog/6-steps-to-improve-your-sender-reputation-score
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-19T09:54:30.209Z

[Read original post](https://resend.com/blog/6-steps-to-improve-your-sender-reputation-score)