Every Stella Connect account has a reputation and hourly quota for sending Connect Requests. These two features help protect us from spammers that would otherwise send a lot of emails quickly, that could then damage the reputation of our sending servers and negatively affect other Stella Connect accounts.

Reputation

An account's reputation can be Poor, Good, or Excellent. Reputation is determined by bounce rates, spam complaints and unsubscribes. The more bounces and spam complaints you see relative to your overall sending volume, the lower your reputation will be.

Spam Complaints

When you send email long enough, spam complaints are inevitable, but a large number of complaints can mean that recipients don't recognize why they are receiving your emails, don't recall signing up for email from you, or their email addresses weren't provided directly.

At certain spam complaint thresholds, ISPs may begin routing all your email to spam folders, completely block your email or you as a sender, or blacklist the Stella Service sending IPs. The reputation of our IP addresses is paramount to ensuring high deliverability for all of our users.

Generally if you are approaching these thresholds Stella Service will make contact to advise that spam complaints have increased and work with you to improve this to an acceptable standard.

Bounce Rate

Bounces are undeliverable emails, typically because the receiving server or mailbox encountered some sort of delivery issue.

Bounces are considered normal when sending large volumes of email, however industry standards suggest that your bounce rate should be below 5% of your total email volume. Reasons for high bounce rates are but not limited to old or stale recipient email addresses, fake or incorrectly spelled email addresses and using unconfirmed or single opt-in lists. A bounce can also occur if the recipient's inbox is full.

What can I do ?

To ensure a good reputation score it is important to have procedures and checks in places to ensure good email addresses are being supplied to the Stella connect platform.

Don't use purchased, rented, or third-party recipient lists. Using a confirmed or double opt-in process is considered an industry best practice, but it's not strictly required. When you use the double opt-in method, you're targeting only those recipients who want to hear from you. Double opted-in lists have much higher engagement levels over time which translates to more opens and clicks and fewer spam complaints and bounces. You should always ensure that you're only sending to recipients who have a prior business relationship with you.

Maintaining a low Bounce Rate

As mentioned above an acceptable bounce rate is 5% or less of your total email volume. This can be maintained by removing stale or old email addresses, validate email addresses before adding to your database/sending to Stella Connect API.

Reputation Score

A positive Reputation score of Good or Excellent is determined by successfully achieving a bounce rate below 5% and preventing as many spam complaints as possible. Achieving this will greatly improve your ability to send Connect Requests that successfully reach your customers inbox thus allowing for a greater response rate and increasing customer interaction with your brand.