Last time I talked about Can-Spam and how it affects your email campaigns. Today I'll talk about blacklists and how to stay off them.
If
you send out email messages and receive a decent chunk of spam
complaints, you will probably eventually be blacklisted. A blacklist is
a list of IP addresses that have been reported as sending spam. If an
ISP puts you on a blacklist, you'll be blocked from sending to their
customers.
If you get blacklisted, you should contact the
blacklist administrator and ask how to get removed. It can be difficult
to get a hold of an ISP's blacklist administrator, so I recommend using
an email marketing service.
If you use a web-based email
marketing service, it's the software provider's responsibility to build
strong relations with the ISPs. Using a service like iContact (which
used to be known as IntelliContact) will ensure that you aren't put on
any blacklists. It's easy to stay off blacklists when you use a trusted service like
iContact. iContact even has employees that speak on a daily basis with Internet Service Providers to maintain a good relationship. This will save a lot of time and heartache during your campaign.
Next time, I'll talk to you about how ISP spam-filters work and how to write messages that won't get filtered.
