What You Need To Know About Blacklists If You Send Newsletters
Imagine that a client sends newsletters using their database, which they have been collecting for several years. Obviously, there are people among their addressees who actively read their letters and buy goods. But some got on the list thanks to the purchase a year ago, and they are no longer interested in their products.
These recipients do not open letters, do not unsubscribe from them, but simply delete. After some time, the client gets on the blacklist. Why?
Why Do Some Addresses Get on Blacklists?
When the letter arrives, the spam service already considers that this letter was sent to a spam trap. Therefore, it adds this sender to the blacklist. It instantly spreads to all servers that use this blacklist when receiving mail. Two other similar situations can lead to being blacklisted:
- When you took the address on the website of your future client or wrote it down in a paper form, and then send newsletters;
- When the address is subscribed through the form on your site, but you do not have confirmation of the subscription through Double Opt-In.
These situations are similar. Your list contains addresses that you do not know anything about. Is the address on the website correct? Did the owner himself subscribe through the form on your website? Trap addresses are often placed on websites to prevent mailing from those who use auto-collecting addresses.
In such a case, we recommend using an email verifier like those on https://cleantalk.org/email-checker to secure your database.
How Not to Be Blacklisted?
1) Be sure to use Double Opt-in
This way, you will avoid unnecessary subscriptions and registrations of robots on your site. A client can be blacklisted because an anti-spam service robot subscribed to their newsletters, and the client did not receive a confirmation letter from it.
2) Do not send emails to people who do not read them
We know the pain of removing addresses from the list. After all, every address is your potential client. If the addressee has not read one of your letters — it’s okay. If they have not read the letter for a month, maybe they went on vacation. But if not a single letter has been read in 3 months or half a year — then delete such an address from your database. It will not make you money, but because of it, you can get blacklisted.
3) Confirm the subscription in the first letter
If you are only starting to do mailings, and the addresses have been collected for a long time, ask the recipients by the first letter to confirm that they want to receive your mailing. Otherwise, you may send mailings to robots.
4) Captcha
It is advisable to add a captcha to your subscription form to avoid unnecessary robot subscriptions.
In Conclusion
The first removal from the blacklist is very easy to do. Companies are sympathetic to such problems and remove the sender from the blacklist. But if they get on the blacklist again and again — they are under the risk that the antispam service will refuse to remove this address from its blacklist.
Then deliverability will suffer greatly. So, be careful with sending letters to unknown addresses and collecting this database from unreliable sources. Good luck!
