Email Reputation Score and Its Impact on Deliverability

Overview

Your Reputation Score is a quick health check for your program emails. It shows how trustworthy your sending looks to inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook, so you can catch problems before your advocates miss an important email.

What is the Reputation Score?

You’ll find the Reputation Score at the top of your Emails dashboard. To get there, go to Intelligence > Dashboards > Emails.

So where does the number come from? Ambassador sends your program emails through Twilio SendGrid, a trusted email delivery provider. Your Ambassador account has its own dedicated SendGrid account, and the Reputation Score is SendGrid’s score for that account. We show it right in your dashboard, so you don’t need a separate login.

Here’s what that means for you:

It reflects only your emails. Other Ambassador customers’ sending doesn’t affect your score.
It’s one score for your whole account. You can set up to 5 sending domains, and they all share this single score. There isn’t a separate score for each domain.
It covers all your email templates. The filters on the Emails dashboard don’t change your score.
It updates daily. The score is based on your recent sending activity.

Note: Your Reputation Score isn’t the percentage of emails that land in the inbox. It’s an estimate of how healthy your sending habits look. A high score makes inbox delivery more likely, but it can’t guarantee it.

Why it matters

Inbox providers decide whether your emails reach the inbox, go to spam, or get blocked entirely. They base that decision largely on your sending reputation. A healthy score helps your referral invites, reward notifications, and Advocate Portal emails reach the people who need them. The Advocate Portal is where advocates see their links, rewards, and activity.

If your score starts to drop, treat it as an early warning. It’s much easier to fix a small dip than to recover from a major one.

What affects your score

SendGrid calculates your score from how your recent emails performed:

Delivered emails: Messages that were successfully accepted. These help your score.
Bounces: Emails that couldn’t be delivered. A hard bounce means the address doesn’t exist. A soft bounce is temporary, like a full inbox.
Blocks: Emails an inbox provider refused to accept.
Invalid emails: Addresses that are badly formatted or don’t exist.
Spam reports: Recipients who clicked Report spam or Junk on your email.

You can track your bounces, blocks, and spam reports on the same Emails dashboard.

How to read your score

Your dashboard color-codes your score to match these ranges:

Score	What it means	What to do
Above 80%	Healthy. Your emails have a good chance of reaching the inbox.	Keep up your current habits.
70% to 80%	Needs attention. Something is starting to hurt your reputation.	Check the bounces, blocks, and spam reports on your Emails dashboard to find the cause.
Below 70%	Critical. Your email sending may be paused or suspended.	Take action right away using the steps below.

We recommend aiming for 90% or higher. That gives you a comfortable buffer if you have an off week.

How to improve your score

Use an authenticated sending domain

Major inbox providers now require authentication, which proves your emails really come from you. You should have been required to setup an email sending domain, but check your Settings to confirm.

Email people who asked to hear from you

Only send to contacts who opted in to your program. Never upload purchased or rented email lists. They’re full of invalid addresses and people who will report you as spam.

Keep your contact list clean

Remove or update addresses that bounce. Before you import contacts, check them for typos and outdated addresses. Fewer bounces means a stronger score.

Focus on engaged contacts

Use Segments to send to contacts who have opened or clicked recently. If someone hasn’t engaged in a long time, email them less often. If they still don’t respond, consider removing them from your sends.

Keep your sending volume steady

Big, sudden spikes can look suspicious to inbox providers. Planning a large send, like launching a new campaign to your whole customer list? Ramp up gradually over several days instead of sending everything at once.

Make unsubscribing easy

When people can’t find an unsubscribe link, they hit Report spam instead. That hurts your score far more than an unsubscribe. Keep your unsubscribe link easy to find, and respect opt-outs right away.

Send emails people expect

Use a sender name people will recognize. Keep content relevant to your program, and avoid sending too often. Review your Automations to make sure contacts aren’t getting duplicate or overlapping emails.

Tip: Keep your spam report rate below 0.1%, which is about 1 report per 1,000 emails. Google asks senders to never reach 0.3%.

What happens if your score drops?

If your score falls below 70%, your email sending may be paused or suspended. We’ll reach out if that happens, but don’t wait for us. Checking your score regularly lets you spot a dip and fix it before it becomes a problem.

A low score can also send more of your emails to spam folders. Recovery takes time, so don’t be discouraged if your score doesn’t bounce back overnight. A few weeks of steady, healthy sending will rebuild your reputation.

Questions? Email support@getambassador.com

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