First of all, in case you don’t recall the famous internal mantra of the Bill Clinton 1992 presidential campaign (It’s the economy, stupid), I am not calling anyone bad names. But like James Carville (a Clinton campaign manager), I think this issue is so important and still overlooked, that it doesn’t hurt to use a ‘hit you over the head with it’ type of phrase to emphasize the point.

While content still plays a role in spam determination, your reputation as an email marketer is, in most cases, now more important.  Furthermore, marketers need to realize that establishing and maintaining a good email reputation is as critical as preserving a good credit score.

If you don’t pay your bills for several months, your credit rating will take a hit and you could see credit card companies change your terms, have trouble getting new credit, etc.  You would be in danger of being labeled a credit risk.  Send a lot emails that bounce or have a significant percentage of your recipients report your email as SPAM and your reputation will suffer and you risk being seen as a spammer.  If you are pegged as a spammer, your emails, even if they are legitimate, will likely go into a spam or bulk folder instead of the inbox.  Needless to say, conversions from a spam folder aren’t good.

So, if you aren’t already focusing on your email reputation, what should you do?  More on that in the next post.