Deliverability
What is Domain Reputation?
A mailbox provider's trust score for your sending domain, built from authentication, engagement, complaints, and spam-trap hits.
Domain reputation is the per-domain trust signal mailbox providers compute from how recipients react to your mail (opens, replies, and Not Spam versus Report Spam), authentication results, complaint and spam-trap rates, and sending consistency. Because it follows the domain and its DKIM signing identity rather than the IP, it persists across IP changes and shared infrastructure. Gmail exposes a coarse Bad, Low, Medium, and High view of it in Postmaster Tools.
Why it matters for cold email
In modern filtering, domain reputation matters more than IP reputation, and it is exactly what cold senders risk burning on their primary brand domain. This is why outreach is run from separate lookalike domains and subdomains, so a damaged reputation never contaminates the company's main email.
Related terms
Stop guessing at deliverability.
Scheduler Zero handles authentication, warmup, and sender reputation so your cold email lands in the inbox, not the spam folder.