If you’re an email marketer then you need to avoid ISPs’ blacklists like the plague. If you want to establish yourself as a real authority and start making money from your list, then your reputation is your ticket to success, and without it you’re going to sink like a rock. Too many people think email marketing is as easy as paying for an email blaster program, scraping together some leads, and then spamming them to death with annoying promotions.
This is the approach of throwing as many promotions out that you possibly can while hoping at least one will stick. Unfortunately – assuming this is your approach – then there are precautions that have been set in place to prevent spammers from successfully abusing mass email software to harass individuals through their inbox. This is where we’re going to go over 2 easy steps to stay off the blacklist and keeping your reputation in check.
First: List Purchasing Can Hinder Your Mass Email Campaigns
If you want to get blacklisted then by all means, go out and buy somebody else’s list and send it out. Here’s the thing though, most lists that are sold have emails that have been procured using software that goes through the Internet and scrapes up thousands of random email addresses. In this case, it’s not the lack of specific targeting that you need to worry about, but the legitimacy of the email address itself.
Consider this: When an email account is closed it becomes a spam trap account, so that when messages are sent to this address, they bounce. Now, when a big email provider like Google or Yahoo detects lots of messages being sent to a dead account and bouncing, they’ll report the senders to Spamhaus, one of the leading anti-spam services on the web. If you’ve got an email auto responder pumping out messages to a list with dead accounts – meaning spam traps – then you can expect to end up on this list. This will destroy your credibility, and your emails will go straight to the “Spam” folder of the recipient.
Second: Utilize Your Double Opt-In Functionality
All the major bulk email senders provide the ability to have all new subscribers double opt-in upon submission of their details. What this means is that when an individual enters their contact details – meaning their email address – into your list, then an email is sent to them, requesting that they confirm they were the ones who opted in.
The reason behind this is that some people might enter a fake email into your opt-in forms, while others might just enter somebody else’s email who never wanted the information, and without double opt-in, that person – the one who DIDN’T really subscribe to your email list – might label you as a spammer, which will affect the relationship between you and your email service provider.
Use these 2 easy steps to stay off the ISPs’ blacklist so that you can build your reputation along with a legitimate, happy email list.