What’s the difference between a reputation issue and a technical issue?
- Technical issues: Configuration or infrastructure problems.
- Broken SPF, DKIM, or DMARC
- DNS errors or misconfigurations
- Server connectivity problems
- TLS certificate issues
- Usually affects all mail equally and immediately.
- Reputation issues: Trust problems from sending behavior.
- High complaint rates
- Poor engagement signals
- Blocklist presence
- Spam trap hits
- Usually builds gradually (unless triggered by an event).
Distinguishing: Technical issues show in authentication results and headers. Reputation issues show in postmaster tools and bounce patterns.
Sometimes both overlap. Fix technical issues first since they are faster to resolve.
Is the ship mechanically broken, or is it banned from ports? Different problems, different solutions.
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