What are the risks of resending email confirmations to unconfirmed addresses?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Mailchimp states that sending to unconfirmed email addresses violates their terms of service and industry best practices for consent-based marketing. They emphasize the importance of verifiable permission before sending any marketing emails.
Email marketer from Email on Acid shares that sending to unconfirmed addresses can severely damage your sender reputation. ISPs use engagement metrics to assess sender quality. Low engagement from unconfirmed addresses (e.g., opens, clicks) signals low quality, leading to placement in spam folders.
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that resending confirmation emails to unconfirmed addresses poses risks to sender reputation, deliverability, and compliance. Unengaged recipients may mark emails as spam, increasing bounce rates and potentially leading to blacklisting. Furthermore, sending to addresses without consent violates GDPR and other privacy regulations.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign discusses how sending emails to unconfirmed recipients results in low engagement rates. Low engagement signals to ISPs that your email content is not relevant or desired, leading to decreased deliverability.
Email marketer from Sender Score reports that sending to unvalidated email lists results in high hard bounce rates. Hard bounces indicate invalid email addresses and negatively affect sender reputation with ISPs. Maintaining a clean and validated list is crucial for optimal deliverability.
Email marketer from Litmus emphasizes that best practice dictates obtaining explicit consent before sending emails. Sending to unconfirmed addresses violates this principle and can lead to legal repercussions under CAN-SPAM and GDPR.
Email marketer from EmailMarketingPro Forum reports that repeatedly sending confirmation emails to inactive addresses is counterproductive and wasteful. It consumes resources without yielding results. Focus should be on engaging confirmed and active subscribers.
Email marketer from Reddit states that repeatedly emailing unconfirmed addresses is a common 'no-no' in email marketing. It can lead to your domain being flagged and negatively impacts the entire email program.
Email marketer from HubSpot explains that consistently sending emails to unconfirmed addresses damages sender reputation. This reputation affects where your emails land – inbox, spam, or blocked. A good sender reputation is essential for email marketing success.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from SpamResource explains that repeatedly sending to unconfirmed addresses significantly increases the likelihood of being flagged as spam. ISPs and mailbox providers closely monitor engagement metrics, and low engagement from these recipients signals potential spam activity.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that an unconfirmed email may not belong to the intended person and that sending mail to people who haven't confirmed and aren't using the service isn't a good idea if it won't bring in much revenue. Also advises to consider the risks of reputation loss and poor delivery against the expected return.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that sending a lot of mail to recipient email addresses you've not sent to before that may not exist and if they do exist may not have asked for the email is a bad idea. It can damage the reputation of your mail stream that can take a long time and a lot of work to recover from, effort and resources that could be spent more profitably elsewhere.
Expert from Word to the Wise (Laura Atkins) responds that good list hygiene is vital. Regularly cleaning your email list by removing unengaged users, including those who haven't confirmed, will help keep your email deliverability rates up. This means fewer bounces, less chance of hitting spam traps, and a better sender reputation overall.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from SparkPost outlines that the practice of sending to unconfirmed email addresses negatively impacts sender reputation, leading to deliverability issues. These issues can manifest as emails landing in spam folders or being blocked completely by ISPs.
Documentation from Microsoft SNDS explains that sending emails to unconfirmed recipients impacts IP reputation. Microsoft's Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) tracks sending behavior. Sending to inactive or invalid addresses contributes to negative IP reputation scores, affecting deliverability to Outlook and Hotmail users.
Documentation from RFC Editor explains that sending emails to unverified addresses violates established email standards (RFC 5321, section 3.1) by potentially directing messages to unintended recipients or generating unwanted traffic. This can negatively impact the overall email ecosystem.
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools outlines that consistently sending emails to unconfirmed addresses leads to increased spam complaint rates. High spam rates directly impact deliverability to Gmail users. Google actively filters emails from senders with elevated spam complaint levels.