Clean Up Your Email Lists - How to Avoid Getting Blacklisted!

 If it has been a while since you’ve cleaned up your email list, or you are just getting started with a new marketing campaign for your website, You will need to ensure that you are sending your broadcast emails to a clean opt-in list.

What is a clean opt-in list?

A clean list is a list that you send to that includes only valid email addresses of contacts that have intentionally opted-in to receive emails from your website. This is different from a list of your customers or other web users who may occasionally interact with your website. These are contacts who have specifically indicated they want to receive your marketing emails by signing up, typically via an opt-in form, that clearly indicates they will be receiving marketing or regular emails from your website.

Why do I need a clean list?

Nobody likes spam or unsolicited emails! There are even laws against this! It is absolutely critical that you do ensure your list is clean and an opted in list. If you end up sending out a large volume broadcast to a dirty list, or a list of emails that may contain no longer valid email addresses, or even to a list of contacts who really don’t even remember who you are, let alone who have not opted-in to hear from you, it increases the chances that your website domain and email server will get blacklisted.

What is blacklisted?

Blacklisted is when your email server and website domain IPs get added to national and international “blacklists” or databases of senders who are considered to most likely "spammers." There are many organizations that track, add and manage these blacklists, and each of them have slightly different criteria and thresholds of what qualifies a sender to be added to the blacklist.

There are, however, commonly agreed upon criteria that can get you blacklisted including:

• Sending a broadcast email to a list with too many invalid email addresses (infraction:  large number of hard bounces i.e. sending to a cold list)
• Getting marked as spam by recipients within their own inbox--utilizing their report as spam feature (infraction: high volume of spam reports—and I’ve seen this number be as low as 2!)
• And even just sending out a large volume of emails--even to a clean list--after not having sent to that list in a long time (infraction:  increased send volume in a period of time cold IP/domain)

There are a number of other conditions that can influence getting on a blacklist, but these are some of the most common “no-nos” that well-meaning website business can fall victim to, and should be avoided!

What happens if I get blacklisted?

Once on a blacklist, your server and domain will suffer the fate of not having any broadcast emails delivered to any of the intended recipients. Instead, all the mail sent out will get denied entrance to the recipients’ email servers and will end up going... nowhere—in other words, most of the time email sent out from a blacklisted server or domain will not even make it into the recipients' Spam folder!

How do I get off a blacklist?

Blacklists organizations deem you guilty until proven innocent. Any trespass to their algorithms and you are on their list—no questions asked, no warning, no notice. These organizations expect you as a broadcast sender to be aware of the best practices. However, fear not, If you do get added to a blacklist, there is a protocol to get your off. You will need to identify and contact each company that has blacklisted you, and personally request to be removed from their blacklist. In most cases they will then give you the benefit of the doubt, and assuming you gave them cause to believe you are human, and will correct the error of your ways, they will de-blacklist you. But be warned, if you continue to send to a cold and/or dirty list, they will blacklist you again immediately, and the second time they may not be so forgiving. The best approach is to not get blacklisted in the first place!

*If you do suspect you are on a blacklist, you will need to reach out to a Full Partner support technician via  support@fullpartner.com as our servers are likely involved in the blacklist and we will need to get them de-listed immediately.

How do I stay off a blacklist?

It is your responsibility to make sure you are sending to a clean opt-in list. There are a number of things you can do to clean up your list and ensure you send to only opted-in contacts.

1. Build Your Own Qualified List – Do not purchase or borrow anybody else’s list. This is the biggest “no-no,” and Full Partner will not allow you to import any list that you have not obtained through your own contacts. Build your own lists via an Opt-In Form where you explicitly state that you would like to send them marketing or promotional emails.
2. Clean You List via an Online Email Cleaning Service – If your list is relatively large, and cold (meaning you have not sent to them in quite some time) the first and best place to start is to use an Email List Cleaning Service. There is a fee for these online services, but it can be worth it, especially if you have a large out of date list. TIP: You can do a web search on the term: “Best Email List Cleaning Service” to find many of them out there.
3. Warm Up Your Email Server and Your List! - You can send to smaller segmented lists over the course of a few days, and “warm up” your servers, and let your contacts know that you would like to send them emails. Be friendly and courteous in your tone, and honest about your intentions. Be sure to link to an Opt-In Form and invite them to subscribe to your list to continue hearing from you. Let them know you will not send to them again unless they fill out that form indicating that they want to continue to hear from you. Then respect that!

Note: If your new  opt-in list ends up relatively small compared to your total contacts database, that is the way it goes! You should never continue to send to a list that has not opted-in! It is better to send broadcast emails to a small, qualified list than it is to send emails to a large list of people who really do not want to hear from you.  Remember, by sending to smaller segmented lists, your email server will not get flagged for a sudden increase in volume, and you will build confidence in your domain. 

-> Read on through to the next help for more!

To clean up your existing contacts and create a true opt-in list that you can send your informational and promotional emails to click the Next button to move through the following topics in sequential order.

1. Create a New Opt-In List
2. Create a Web Page and a Rule to Add the Contact to the New Opt-In List
3. Create an Opt-In Invitation Broadcast Email to Send to All Contacts
4. Segment your Larger List to Send Your Invitation Broadcast To
5. Create a Thank You Email to Send a Free Gift in exchange for the Opt-in
6. Provide Opt-In Forms on Your Website - Build Your Own Clean Lists Organically!