How do I recover email deliverability after sending to a purchased list?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Reddit shares that you need to focus on improving your domain reputation by sending engaging content to a smaller, highly engaged segment of your list. This helps demonstrate to ISPs that your emails are wanted.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum says to keep an eye on your bounce rates and take steps to reduce them. High bounce rates can negatively impact your sender reputation and deliverability.
Email marketer from Gmass tells to maintain a consistent sending schedule and volume to establish a predictable sending pattern with ISPs. Sudden spikes in volume can trigger spam filters.
Email marketer from Mailjet recommends removing unengaged subscribers and those who have marked your emails as spam. Regularly cleaning your list helps improve your sender reputation and deliverability.
Email marketer from EmailGeeks Forum shares that if available to you, subscribing to feedback loops (FBLs) with major ISPs allows you to receive reports of spam complaints from your subscribers, which helps you identify and address issues that are causing people to mark your emails as spam.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests keeping problematic addresses on the platform in a state that prevents accidental mailing, to avoid mistakes like an "intern" uploading the wrong list.
Email marketer from EmailToolTester suggests building and maintaining a robust suppression list that includes unsubscribes, hard bounces, and spam complaints. This prevents you from accidentally emailing people who don't want to receive your messages.
Email marketer from GlockApps states to use an email list validation service to identify and remove invalid, inactive, or spam trap email addresses from your list. This helps reduce bounce rates and improve your sending reputation.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor recommends implementing re-engagement campaigns to try to win back inactive subscribers. This can help you identify and remove unengaged subscribers from your list, improving deliverability.
Email marketer from Litmus says to actively monitor your sender reputation using tools like Sender Score or Google Postmaster Tools. Address any issues that are negatively impacting your reputation, such as spam complaints or blacklistings.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares it’s not only not right, it’s a net loss, hindering the ability to reach people who want to hear from you, interfering with relationships with customers and real prospects.
What the experts say7Expert opinions
Expert from Spam Resource warns that using purchased lists is almost always a bad idea because the recipients did not explicitly request to receive emails from you. This can lead to low engagement, high bounce rates, and spam complaints, all of which negatively impact your deliverability.
Expert from Email Geeks recommends burning the entire purchased list and focusing on recently engaged and properly permissioned email addresses to help the domain reputation rebound.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests deleting the purchased list entirely rather than just suppressing it, to avoid accidental sends to the suppression list.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that hitting spam traps is a significant issue after using a purchased list. They recommend immediately suppressing the addresses that triggered the traps from all future mailings to avoid further damaging your sender reputation.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that it's important to actively monitor your sender reputation using tools like Return Path's Sender Score or Microsoft's SNDS. These tools provide insights into how mailbox providers view your sending practices and can help you identify and address any issues that are impacting your deliverability.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that focusing on permission practices is crucial, and using double opt-in is the most secure way to ensure you only send email to users who actively want to receive it. Using double opt-in from the start helps avoid deliverability problems associated with purchased lists.
Expert from Email Geeks advises to end relationship with people who purchase more lists after being told not to.
What the documentation says6Technical articles
Documentation from Google explains to use Google Postmaster Tools to monitor your sending reputation and identify issues affecting deliverability, such as spam complaints or authentication failures. They suggest fixing these issues based on the feedback from the tools.
Documentation from SparkPost advises to monitor your engagement metrics (open rates, click-through rates, etc.) closely. Low engagement can indicate deliverability issues, so it's important to identify and address any problems.
Documentation from Microsoft emphasizes that senders can make sure that they are adhering to best practices for sending email. Implement authentication methods such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to verify your identity and improve deliverability to Outlook.com users.
Documentation from RFC shares that implementing SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records in your DNS settings helps prevent email spoofing and improves deliverability by verifying that the emails are being sent from authorized servers.
Documentation from Sendgrid emphasizes the importance of warming up your IP address gradually. This involves starting with small volumes of emails to your most engaged subscribers and gradually increasing the volume over time to build a positive sending reputation.
Documentation from dmarc.org advises using DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) policy to protect your domain from unauthorized use, commonly known as email spoofing. It's built on top of SPF and DKIM to add an extra layer of authentication and reporting.