Intro
Every organization that sends out emails are assigned a score by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This score is the sender reputation that can affect the deliverability of your email campaigns. Hence, email marketers should always strive to practice the below tips to maintain a good sender reputation. If your reputation suffers, your emails may be blocked by the ISPs as spam.
Practice double opt-in
We have mentioned many times previously that buying an email list is a big no-no. It’s a waste of time and money as you’ll get lots of fake emails, honeypots, etc. Sending emails to a bought list is a guaranteed way to get your mail server domain or IP address blacklisted. Nobody likes to be sent emails without signing up for those newsletters.
To comply with privacy regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), we recommend practicing double opt-in whenever you are building your mailing list.
If you don’t know what is the concept of opt-in, please read the below page.
Understanding the concept of opt-in
Respect unsubscribe requests
When complying with anti-spam regulations, email marketers should not just put an unsubscribe link in all marketing emails just for appearance sake. Whenever a reader clicks on the unsubscribe link, they should be given the option to confirm that they want to unsubscribe from your mailings.
Alternatively, you can let them choose which types of newsletters they wish to receive or not. After the reader has updated their choices, respect their wishes. If they no longer want to receive any emails from you, then unsubscribe them. Don’t attempt to send them any more marketing emails unless they subscribe again.
Unsubscribe emails that hard bounced
If you don’t already know this, your email marketing campaign should be sent via an Email Service Provider (ESP). This way, you can see statistics about email bounces and the reasons. If you see any emails that are hard bounced, immediately unsubscribe those email addresses from your mailing list.
Hard bounce means there is a permanent issue with delivering emails to those addresses. Note that some ESPs will automatically unsubscribe email addresses that incur hard bounces so there are no actions required for those cases.
Wondering what is a hard bounce or soft bounce? Read the below page.
Remember to perform IP warming
Just as you won’t be talking too much to a total stranger, ISPs will not take too kindly to you sending large amounts of emails to their users from the start. You will need to perform IP warming by sending a small amount of emails to users from that ISP. Over time, you can gradually ramp up the amount that you can safely send without being blacklisted or blocked.
Learn more about IP warming at the below page.
Validate your mailing list regularly
Without regular cleanings of your mailing list, you may find your bounce rate increasing over time. The reasons for this include people changing their email addresses, people quitting their organizations, mail servers no longer operational and so on. Therefore, to limit the number of bounces, you will need to validate your list with the MailboxValidator bulk validation. Ideally, you should perform the validation before sending out any email marketing campaigns.
See the MailboxValidator bulk validation plans
Conclusion
A good sender reputation is worth the efforts we’ve mentioned above. When you have a good reputation, your emails will have a high deliverability rate. In tandem, you should also see your open & click rates go up. As email marketers know, open & click rates can heavily influence your sales conversion to boost your revenue. So, follow these 5 tips and your marketing journey will result in favorable results for your earnings.
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