# What is sender reputation? Definition and examples · Leadraft

URL: https://leadraft.co/glossary/sender-reputation
Summary: Sender reputation is the trust mailbox providers place in your sending domain and IP, built from complaints, bounces, authentication and engagement.

Glossary · Email & deliverability · Last updated October 31, 2026

# Sender reputation

Sender reputation is the trust mailbox providers place in your sending domain and IP, built from complaints, bounces, authentication and engagement.

**Also called:** Domain reputation, IP reputation.

Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook each keep their own view of how trustworthy your mail is. They don't publish the formula, but their guidelines show the inputs: spam complaints, attempts to deliver to invalid addresses, authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), sending patterns, spam-trap hits and how recipients engage.

The clearest published number is the complaint threshold. Google asks senders to keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.1% and never let it reach 0.3%; Yahoo asks bulk senders to stay below 0.3%. Bounces count too: Amazon SES notes that providers read a high bounce rate as a sign a sender isn't managing their list.

Reputation is mostly tied to your domain now, which is why cold emailers send from a separate domain: if it gets damaged, your main domain's mail to clients keeps working. Rebuilding a damaged reputation takes weeks of low, clean volume.

In local lead generation, the biggest threats are lists with unverified or guessed addresses, catch-all domains mixed into verified sends, and messages that aren't relevant to the business. Clean lists and relevant messages protect reputation better than any tool.

## Example

A new domain sends 2,000 emails on day one to an unverified list. Bounces and complaints spike, and later mail from the domain starts landing in spam even for verified addresses.

## Sources

1.  1.[Google, Email sender guidelines](https://support.google.com/a/answer/81126)
2.  2.[Google, Email sender guidelines FAQ](https://support.google.com/a/answer/14229414)
3.  3.[Yahoo, Sender best practices](https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/)
4.  4.[Amazon SES, Reputation metrics messages (bounce, complaint and spamtrap notices)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/reputationdashboardmessages.html)

## Related terms

-   [Email deliverabilityEmail deliverability is the ability of your emails to reach recipients' inboxes rather than bouncing or landing in spam.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/email-deliverability)
-   [Bounce rateBounce rate is the percentage of sent emails that were returned as undeliverable; for cold email, under 2% is a sensible target.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/bounce-rate)
-   [Spam trapA spam trap is an email address used to catch senders with poor list practices; mail to one can damage your sender reputation or get you blocklisted.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/spam-trap)
-   [Email warm-upEmail warm-up is gradually increasing the volume sent from a new domain or mailbox so mailbox providers learn to trust it before full campaigns.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/email-warm-up)
-   [DMARCDMARC is a DNS policy that tells receivers what to do with mail that fails SPF and DKIM alignment for your domain, and where to send reports.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/dmarc)

## Further reading

-   [What's a good cold email bounce rate?](https://leadraft.co/blog/cold-email-bounce-rate)
-   [Cold-email checklist for agencies](https://leadraft.co/blog/cold-email-checklist-for-agencies)

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Last built: 2026-11-09