Do DMARC rejections negatively impact IP or domain reputation at Gmail and Yahoo?
Summary
What email marketers say7Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Stackoverflow responds to the question saying that DMARC itself is a validation/security protocol and not designed to directly affect your reputation, and if your reputation is low, DMARC will help protect you from spammers that may send mail claiming to be you.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares their understanding and observation that DMARC-related rejections do not impact reputation with normal mailbox providers, including Gmail.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum, responds to the question saying that DMARC helps protect domain reputation and the best way to protect reputation is by sending mail which the users will welcome - otherwise, DMARC will trigger and ruin the reputation
Marketer from Email Geeks shares their experience that clients messing up DMARC, resulting in rejections, didn't affect their sending reputation (IP or domain).
Email marketer from Mailjet shares that failing DMARC checks consistently could negatively impact your sender reputation. While the primary role of DMARC is to authenticate your emails, a high number of rejections might be viewed as a sign of suspicious activity by ISPs like Gmail and Yahoo, potentially affecting deliverability.
Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog suggests that DMARC rejections, if frequent, can be seen as a negative signal by mailbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo. Though DMARC's primary function is authentication and preventing spoofing, high rejection rates can indicate poor sending practices or a compromised domain, potentially hurting sender reputation.
Email marketer from Reddit r/emailmarketing shares their experience, suggesting that a few DMARC failures are unlikely to tank your reputation, but persistently high failure rates signal problems. They recommend actively monitoring DMARC reports and fixing any issues quickly to avoid deliverability problems.
What the experts say6Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that DMARC helps to protect your reputation as a sender, which is very important. DMARC uses SPF and DKIM to validate that emails are genuinely from you and can help to tell other ISPs to reject all emails that are spoofed, thus protecting reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks states that it wouldn’t be unreasonable for an IP address that sends a lot of “forged” mail to get a poor reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks shares their view that IP reputation isn’t a primary metric at Google, and it takes egregious behavior to get IP rejected at Google.
Expert from Email Geeks acknowledges that DMARC rejections might affect IP reputation and emphasizes the bad practice of allowing customers to send mail that is known to fail DMARC.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that the point of DMARC is to prevent mail that doesn’t pass (assumed to be forged) from affecting the domain reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks indicates the customer is doing something they shouldn’t, they’re getting appropriate results, and that the customer needs to resolve the issue.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from DMARC.org states that DMARC primarily protects domains from unauthorized use in email, preventing spoofing and phishing attacks. While it doesn't explicitly address IP or domain reputation, implementing and monitoring DMARC helps maintain the integrity of a domain, which indirectly supports a positive reputation.
Documentation from Microsoft explains that DMARC works with SPF and DKIM to ensure emails are properly authenticated. While DMARC itself doesn't directly influence reputation, consistently failing DMARC can indicate underlying issues like domain spoofing, which can harm your sender reputation and deliverability to Outlook.com or Hotmail addresses.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that while DMARC itself doesn't directly impact sender reputation, consistently failing DMARC can be a symptom of underlying problems that *do* affect reputation, such as spamming or sending from unauthorized IPs. It highlights that DMARC helps protect your domain from spoofing, indirectly improving trust and deliverability.