Have you ever sent out an email blast, only to find that your carefully crafted messages never make it to the inbox? Instead, they’re caught in the dreaded spam folder — or worse: they never get delivered. You look at your email deliverability rate and you’re seeing worse numbers than you thought you would. What’s going on?
You know, if you’ve been in email marketing for some amount of time, you probably have experienced IP blacklisting first hand and it’s incredibly frustrating. IP blacklisting can ruin your entire email marketing strategy, stopping it in its tracks, even if you’re sharing a valuable piece of content or sending out an important newsletter or promoting a new product.
If you’re confused, let’s first find out what IP blacklisting is, and how you can avoid or recover from it. In this post, I’ll break down what an IP blacklist is, how you got there, the effect on your email marketing campaigns, and what steps you can take to prevent accidentally winding up on one and get yourself off.
1. What is IP Blacklisting in Email Marketing?
If you send emails as a part of your email marketing campaigns, you want those emails to drop into your subscriber’s inbox, not the spam folder. Yet what if someone flags your IP as a source of spam emails? IP blacklisting is where this happens.
IP blacklisting is when your IP address is added to a blacklist provider because it is harmful or suspicious to email services providers (ESP’s) or internet service providers (ISPs). Simply put, this means that your email server is marked as spam sending or sending unsolicited email. When that happens, your emails aren’t going to be delivered properly and you are most likely to notice a significant drop in your email deliverability rate.
Blacklisting happens because ISPs and email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook want to shield their users from harmful emails or unwanted messages. Instead, they count on spam filters and blacklist operators that consider a number of different factors to decide whether your email will likely be spam or not. Volume of emails sent, frequency of spam complaints, and whether emails include suspicious subject lines or email content are all included. If any of those factors cause red flags to go up, your IP address may very well end up on a public blacklist – meaning your emails might have a hard time getting through to valid email addresses.
What’s more, being blacklisted is not just about your particular email marketing efforts at the present time, but it also impacts your sender reputation. This means that your email marketing strategy could be damaged in the long term ranging from starting a delisting request to recover. The fact is that too many flags of an email domain will give you bad engagement rates and bad bounce rates.
2. Why Does IP Blacklisting Happen?
The key to preventing IP blacklisting from happening to you is to understand why it occurs. It’s not some random thing, you get flagged for email marketing for reasons, and they’re all bad practices or suspicious emails. Now let’s take a closer look at the main reasons email marketing gets blacklisted on IPs.
2.1 High Volume of Emails
The most common reason to get blacklisted is to send too many emails in a short time. Email senders with large mailing lists are monitored very closely by email service providers, and Internet service providers (ISPs). If suddenly from some IP address a number of emails is suddenly spike, they may conceive it as spam behavior. This is why when email marketers should always build their campaigns gradually and not send out too many emails to one place at once.
2.2 Spam Complaints
Reporting your emails as spam by recipients signals email providers that your emails are not wanted, and possibly dangerous. An excessive number of spam complaints will virtually land your IP address on blacklists. And this is particularly devastating if you do not split your email lists or do not regularly cleanse them of the bad email addresses (invalid emails) and addresses of inactive users. This issue is one that regular refreshes and management of your contact lists can help avoid.
2.3 Poor Engagement Rates
Email engagement is definitely an important consideration for assessing whether your emails are legitimate or not. Suspicion may be provoked by low engagement rates (high bounce rates, large amount of unopened emails, etc.). If your emails aren’t in resonance with your audience and if you are sending to old email addresses, you are sending the spam filters the message that you are spilling unwanted emails. For a healthy list a list of valid email addresses is a must.
2.4 Spam Traps and Invalid Email Addresses
While email addresses which are solely reserved to catch spammers are called spam traps. If you send an email to one of these addresses, that email will likely get blacklisted immediately. Furthermore, sending to incorrect email addresses can damage your reputation quite a bit as not only will your bounce rates go up, but so will your spam reports. How to Avoid these Pitfalls: Cleaning your email list regularly and making sure you are only targeting real engaged users.
2.5 Poor Email Content and Practices
The content in your emails itself decides whether your emails go straight into the spam folder. According to spam filters, overuse in repeatedly using specific subject lines, words, and phrases used in spam normally, can trigger them. But you need to balance marketing content with informative and engaging content that gives value to your recipients.
3. The Impact of IP Blacklisting on Email Marketing
Being blacklisted can hurt your email marketing campaigns big time, so you want to do all you can to avoid having your IP address blacklisted. So, here’s why every email marketer must know what effect IP blacklisting has.
3.1 Decreased Email Deliverability
When you’re added to a blacklist, the most immediate effect is a decline in email deliverability. After your IP address is flagged your emails are much more likely to just go to the spam folder, instead of your recipient’s inbox. If that is the case, your email marketing efforts may go unacknowledged, and your email deliverability rate will plummet. Your email provider may possibly even stop delivering your messages altogether, in the worst case.
3.2 Harm to Your Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation is pretty important to whether your emails are accepted or blocked by email service providers. Being blacklisted on your IP address will also stain your reputation as a sender. It can take months to repair depending on how authoritative the blacklist provider is. With a poor sender reputation, you will get higher bounce rates, higher spam complaint, and it will become difficult to reach valid email addresses.
3.3 Lower Engagement Rates and Increased Bounce Rates
It’s much harder to maintain a high engagement rate once blacklisted. If someone expects they are going to get an email from someone they think may be potentially dangerous or from someone they see as spammy, they are less likely to open the email. Therefore click through rates drop, bounce rates spiked. As a result, more of your emails end up as undeliverable or irrelevant, declining your email metrics and making it even tougher to attain your target audience.
3.4 Long-Term Financial and Reputational Damage
If you’re a business that uses email marketing to obtain leads, promote a sale or motivate a purchase, IP blacklisting can lead to revenue loss and a damaged brand reputation. If your email marketing strategy was compromised, you’d have to invest in such time consuming and expensive processes like email domain reputation repair or even switching to different email service provider. In the end, this can end up costing your company not only financially, but in customer trust as well.
3.5 Increased Spam Filters and Manual Interventions
After your IP gets blacklisted, you may run into issue where others’ advanced spam filters are filtering your emails based on the type of content your email contains. Even when you’re removed from a blacklist, you’ll have to be extra cautious as some email service providers require a manual review of your messages before they’re delivered. This additional level of scrutiny can really bog down your marketing efforts, delay your progress, and diminish the efficiency of your strategies.
4. How to Avoid IP Blacklisting
If you want to get success from your email marketing strategy, you need to prevent IP blacklisting. Here are actionable steps you can take to minimize the risk:
4.1 Use Reputable Email Service Providers (ESPs)
The first step to protect your IP address is choosing a reliable email service provider. Whilst handling email deliverability, bounce rates and dealing with spam complaints, reputable ESPs have powerful systems set up to help with these. Most providers also give you the tools to keep your email lists clean and to adhere to email marketing comparatives.
4.2 Maintain Clean Email Lists
It’s important to regularly update and clean your email lists. Delete the invalid addresses, the inactive subscribers, any email addresses that produce bounces persistently. By using double opt-in, it ensures that your subscribers really want to view your emails, rather than them being spam complaints, or low engagement rate.
4.3 Monitor Email Metrics
Make sure you watch your email metrics, such as open rates, click through rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints. Early warning signs with your email campaigns can be provided by these metrics. Utilizing such tools such as sender score services, you can keep checking your sender reputation and make proactive moves to take care of any negative trends.
4.4 Implement Proper Email Authentication
Make sure that your emails are correctly authenticated (by protocols like SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)). These authentication methods help validate it is you, a genuine sender, sending the email which improves your chances of landing in the inbox.
4.5 Optimize Email Content
When it comes to producing quality content for your email it’s important to steer clear of spam filters. In your subject lines and email body avoid spammy language, excessive capitalization and too many exclamation marks. It is important to work on content that is not only engaging, relevant and valuable but that will make sense to your audience. You can also personalize your emails to improve engagement rates and make you less likely to be marked as spam.
4.6 Gradually Scale Your Email Campaigns
Don’t let your email sending volume spike suddenly. By gradually sending more emails you can build a better sender reputation and decrease the chances of spam filters. Consistent sending schedule can also help out there to get better deliverability rates.
4.7 Use Double Opt-In
With double opt-in, you’re not added to a mailing list until you’ve confirmed the email address. Having your email list being made up of engaged and interested recipients causes this process is just one of the things that leads to better email deliverability and less spam complaints.
5. How to Recover from IP Blacklisting
If you fail, and somehow you’re added to a blacklist, don’t panic. Here are steps to help you recover:
5.1 Identify the Blacklist
First, check on which blacklist your IP address gets onto. You can find out what blacklist you are on using tools such as MXToolbox or Blacklist Check. You need to know where you are listed on knowing the delisting process.
5.2 Understand the Reason for Blacklisting
Find out why your IP address was blacklisted. Typical reasons are high rates of spam complaints, sending to spam traps, or a high bounce rate. If you understand the root cause, you can fix the problem without worry.
5.3 Clean Your Email Lists
Clean your email lists before requesting delisting. Delete any invalid, inactive, nonengaged email addresses. By practicing stricter email list hygiene we avoid future blacklisting.
5.4 Improve Your Email Practices
To learn more about email marketing, review and enhance your current practices. Be sure to comply with CAN-SPAM regulations, authenticated your emails properly, and make sure that everything you send is highly relevant and valuable to your subscribers. Rebuilding your sender reputation comes with improving your overall email strategy.
5.5 Request Removal from Blacklists
After fixing the underlying issue, inform the blacklist providers in your attempt to get removed. There is no one delisting process for each blacklist, and some require filling out a form, others require evidence that your company has fixed bad practices and still others require waiting a set duration. Be careful to follow the instructions provided by each blacklist provider.
5.6 Monitor Your Sender Reputation
In the event the account delists, be aware that you need to continue to monitor your sender reputation to make sure the account stays off the blacklists. Keep an eye on your email deliverability by using the sender score services and other monitoring tools and address the new issues in time.
6. Tools and Resources
Leveraging the right tools can make managing your email deliverability and sender reputation much easier:
- Blacklist Checking Tools: These include: MXToolbox, Blacklist Check, and DNSBL.
- Email Deliverability Tools: SendGrid, Mailchimp, Mailgun.
- Sender Reputation Services: One system for this is Sender Score by Return Path, Postmaster Tools by Gmail, and Microsoft SNDS.
7. Conclusion
Email marketing’s IP blacklisting is a huge challenge, but understanding both the causes and the impacts of such an event can help you get around it and succeed. Following best practices and keeping your email lists clean as well as keeping an eye on your email metrics will help protect your sender reputation and ensure your email campaigns actually hit the inbox.
It’s important to remember that the main thing to successful email marketing is not only how many emails you send, but also what you send (quality and specifically relevance) of your content. Prioritize your subscribers’ experience, and you’ll build a strong, engaged email list that supports your marketing goals without falling prey to blacklists.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What is the difference between public and private blacklists?
Most email service providers use public blacklists on anybody and they filter the incoming emails. Blacklists that are kept internally by individual organizations or ISPs are called private blacklists and are used to keep undesired emails from being sent by known sources.
2. How long does it take to get delisted from a blacklist?
Different blacklist providers do different things for delisting. This can take anywhere between a few hours and several weeks. Each blacklist operator also has to give you specific instructions.
3. Can changing my IP address help if I’m blacklisted?
Changing your IP address will temporarily fix the problem, but it’s not a long term solution. What that means is if the root cause of the blacklist is not fixed, there’s a big possibility that your new IP address will be blacklisted as well.
4. How often should I clean my email lists?
It’s important to clean your email lists regularly. You should review and update your lists once a month at the least so you can remove any invalid or inactive email addresses and have high engagement rates.
5. What role do spam filters play in IP blacklisting?
Spam filters look at a range of things including your emails’ content, sending behavior, and the sender’s overall reputation. Once you tend to land in the spam folder on a consistent basis, your IP address will get flagged and listed on blacklists.
