How to handle SendGrid shared IP blacklisting with low email volume?
Summary
What email marketers say8Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Email on Acid details best practice for 'warming up' an IP address. Even with small numbers of emails, warming up an IP address improves your IP address reputation. You should start by sending to small numbers of addresses who are actively opening your emails, and then gradually increasing the volume and sending to less engaged addresses over time.
Email marketer from Mailtrap advises users to monitor their sending reputation using tools like Google Postmaster Tools. This shows your sender reputation with Gmail, which is a large proportion of email users. Also use tools to check whether your IP address is on any blacklists. This is crucial to keeping your sender reputation high.
Email marketer from Reddit shares a personal experience suggesting that upgrading to a paid SendGrid plan significantly improved their shared IP reputation and deliverability, even with low sending volume. They believe the paid plans have better IP pools.
Email marketer from Twilio SendGrid Support explains that consistent sending practices, even with low volume, are crucial for maintaining a good shared IP reputation. They advise warming up the IP address gradually by increasing volume over time, authenticating your sending domain using SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and carefully monitoring your bounce and complaint rates. They also recommend reviewing SendGrid's deliverability guide for more details.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow recommends considering transactional email services like Mailjet or Postmark if experiencing deliverability issues with SendGrid's shared IPs at low volume. They highlight these services often have better IP reputation management.
Email marketer from Mailchimp explains that using double opt-in subscription processes reduces the likelihood of sending to mistyped or spam-trap email addresses, and improves the quality of your email lists. This is vital to maintaining high sender reputation and deliverability, especially when using shared IP addresses.
Email marketer from Email Geeks recommends Postmark as an alternative, highlighting its stellar reputation and free plan, but cautions that they will terminate the account if the user causes deliverability issues.
Email marketer from GMass recommends that if using SendGrid or another SMTP service, you should segment your recipient lists. Ensure that recipients who have unsubscribed or bounced are not sent any further emails. Sending emails to addresses which you know are invalid can seriously harm your deliverability with shared IP addresses.
What the experts say7Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks suggests using Amazon SES due to its lower cost and better abuse handling compared to SendGrid.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests that if the issue is solely due to SendGrid's shared IPs, the options are to move to a different provider, either better or worse. They mention Google and Microsoft's network space as examples of sources that don't typically get blocked at the IP level.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that engagement is a primary signal that mailbox providers use to decide where to place your email. If your emails are being placed in the spam folder, improve your engagement rates through list cleaning, re-engagement campaigns, and creating targeted content.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests, for a user sending less than 50 emails a day and struggling with Sendgrid IP blacklisting, using a Google account with their outbound SMTP.
Expert from SpamResource explains that regularly monitoring your IP and domain reputation is crucial. They advise using tools to check if your IP is on any blacklists and to track your sender score to identify and address potential deliverability issues promptly, especially when using shared IPs.
Expert from Email Geeks advises that if reaching the affected market segment is important, moving to a different provider is the best option for the user's low email volume. Also suggests that paying for SendGrid might place the user in a better IP pool.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests that for low volume sending, a dedicated IP is not ideal. They recommend asking Postmark about their Spamcop block rates and possibly contacting recipients to request a different email address if their domain blocks SendGrid.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from RFC documentation explains that implementing SPF records correctly ensures receiving mail servers can verify that emails are sent from authorized IP addresses for your domain. This helps prevent spoofing and improves deliverability by building trust with ISPs.
Documentation from DKIM standards explains that using DKIM signing adds a digital signature to your emails that verifies the authenticity of the sender and message content. This helps ISPs identify legitimate emails and avoid filtering them as spam.
Documentation from DMARC specifications explain that DMARC allows domain owners to specify how receiving mail servers should handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM authentication checks. This helps protect your domain from phishing and spoofing, further enhancing deliverability.