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Email Reputation and Deliverability Glossary
Become familiar with these important email reputation and deliverability terms.
- Abuse complaint
- When prospects mark an email as spam in their email client. These spam complaints are recorded in Account Engagement and appear in your spam-complaint reporting. The limit for abuse complaints is one per every thousand emails, or 0.1%.
- Blocklist
- A list of IPs or domains that are sending unsolicited email and engaging in email bad practices. A blocklist can be public or private.
- CAN-SPAM
- The U.S. law that sets the rules and requirements for senders of bulk marketing email within the United States.
- CASL
- The Canadian anti-spam legislation that sets the rules and regulations for senders of bulk marketing email to or from Canada.
- Direct complaint
- When subscribers complain that they no longer want to receive email from you by emailing our abuse@pardot.com address. These cases are different from standard abuse complaints, because we receive a direct email from the complaining prospect.
- DomainKey
- A form of email authentication that helps improve deliverability. DomainKeys are like signing the back of an envelope to prove that the message inside hasn’t been tampered with.
- Engagement
- How subscribers respond to the content you’re sending. Are your emails being opened and clicked through? Higher engagement metrics improve your reputation and deliverability. Lower engagement, including marking as spam, can decrease your reputation and deliverability.
- ESP
- Email service provider. ESPs enable a user to send permission-based marketing campaigns to prospects.
- MTA
- Message transfer agent. An application that transfers email from point A to B.
- Permission-based marketing
- The practice of sending marketing emails to only those recipients who have consented to receive them. Our permission-based marketing policy means that every prospect in your account must give you explicit permission before you send them marketing emails.
- Reputation
- How your content and sending are judged. It’s a score (out of 100) tied to your IP address or domain that determines how trustworthy of a sender you are. Generally, reputation is calculated with a formula of engagement, abuse complaints, bounces, and send volume.
- Spam
- Unsolicited bulk email. Unsolicited means that the recipients haven’t explicitly consented to receiving emails from the sender. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having nearly identical content.
- SPF
- Sender Policy Framework. An email validation system that prevents email spam by detecting email spoofing by verifying sender IP addresses.
- Spam trap
- Bait email addresses that blocklisting providers and ISPs use for catching spammers. Spam traps can be in old lists, purchased lists, and scraped lists, and they never opt in to receiving email. The best way to stay away from spam traps is to use permission-based marketing and clean old lists before sending through Account Engagement.
- Transactional or operational email
- An email meant to be used for important updates not related to marketing information. They don’t require an unsubscribe link. Transactional emails include confirmations, reminders, or important system-wide updates.
- Unsubscribe
- When a prospect requests to be removed from a list. Unsubscribes must be honored in a timely manner. Failure to do so is a violation of CAN-SPAM.
- Validation key
- Verifies ownership of a sending domain and validates it for sending in Account Engagement.
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