Scoring Methodology

The I.D.E.A. Audit Score consists of your Average Score across 6 different practice areas: Infrastructure, Permission & Notice, Reputation, Inbox Delivery, Messaging Practices, and your policies for Advertisers. For each practice area, you begin with a score of "100" and points are subtracted for each finding that is identified as either a problem or as not an ideal best practice (see detailed findings for examples). The I.D.E.A. audit takes a conservative stance on business policy and, in all cases, any finding that is not the most conservative best practice would result in a negative score.

Practice Area Description Score
Infrastructure Mailserver configuration and header consistency. 88
Permission Optin, optout, and privacy notices. 79
Reputation Blacklists, url blocklists, abuse boards, whitelists. 80
Inbox Delivery Raw inbox deliverability by ISP. 85
Messaging Outbound deployment practices, inbound mail & customer complaint mgmt. 82
Advertiser Practices Policies specific to Company's acceptance and management of advertisers. 95
TOTAL Total Audit Score (average of Practices audited). 85


The I.D.E.A. Audit Seal. After the audit, an I.D.E.A. Audit Seal is awarded and included on all Reports. The specific Seal you are awarded is dependent upon your total score as illustrated below.

Total Score
70-79		 Total Score
80-89		 Total Score
90-100

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