What steps should I take when moving email sending from an ESP to my own infrastructure to resolve unexpected Spamhaus listings and deliverability issues with mailbox providers?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Email marketer from GlockApps.com suggests diligently analyzing bounce codes to understand the reasons for delivery failures. Identify hard bounces (permanent failures) and soft bounces (temporary issues) and take appropriate actions to clean lists and fix configurations.
Email marketer from Mailjet.com emphasizes the importance of sender reputation. They advise monitoring sender score, maintaining clean lists, and engaging with subscribers to demonstrate credibility to mailbox providers.
Marketer from Email Geeks advises contacting providers for assistance with low volume and reputation building. Provides contact information for Apple (via Proofpoint), Yahoo, and Microsoft.
Email marketer from Litmus.com advises actively monitoring deliverability rates after migrating. Implement feedback loops, analyze bounce messages, and use seed lists to identify and address any deliverability issues promptly.
Email marketer from SparkPost.com recommends ensuring that proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is in place before sending any email from a new infrastructure. This helps mailbox providers verify the legitimacy of the sender.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that domains younger than 30 days should not be used for email. They also suggest contacting providers having issues to solve them, as Yahoo is typically fair. It seems like random issues during the initial IP warm-up phase, and cautions about sending from multiple data centers simultaneously, suggesting using them for fallback instead.
Email marketer from superoffice.com provides guidance on how to correctly set up SPF records. This ensures that your emails are properly authenticated, making it easier for them to reach their intended destination.
Email marketer from Reddit suggests that before migrating, export your ESP's allowlist and suppression list. This ensures you maintain a clean list with known good contacts and suppress contacts that previously unsubscribed or bounced. Implement those lists in your new infrastructure right away.
Email marketer from NeilPatel.com advises warming up new IP addresses slowly by gradually increasing sending volume over time. Starting with small batches to engaged users and monitoring deliverability metrics to avoid hitting spam traps and blacklists.
Marketer from Email Geeks says that problems are usually a list management/hygiene problem, rather than an infrastructure problem. This may be especially true when moving to your own infrastructure.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum suggests monitoring IP reputation through various online tools like Sender Score and Talos. A low reputation score indicates potential deliverability issues that need to be addressed, like list cleaning and improving authentication.
Email marketer from emailvendorselection.com explains that mailbox providers might throttle your email volume when you are warming IPs, or if they are unsure about your traffic reputation. It's important to monitor this, and check the various postmaster pages to determine what the thresholds are for the mailbox providers you are sending to.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Wordtothewise.com states that actively monitoring complaint rates through feedback loops (FBLs) is crucial when migrating email infrastructure. A sudden increase in complaints can quickly damage your reputation and lead to blocklisting. You need to set up FBLs and address complaints promptly.
Expert from Spamresource.com highlights the critical importance of properly setting up and testing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records when moving to a new email sending infrastructure. They explain that misconfigured authentication is a common cause of deliverability problems, especially when mailbox providers are unfamiliar with your new IPs and domains. Double-checking your configuration is a must.
Expert from Email Geeks states that Spamhaus does not wildly add newly registered domains to the DBL list. Being listed on the DBL indicates an issue beyond the domain's registration date.
Expert from Email Geeks advises resolving DBL listings to address blocking issues with providers like Outlook, Apple, and Yahoo, suggesting that fixing DBL listings could improve many of the experienced issues.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that rejection messages from Outlook and Apple indicate explicit IP-based blocks, rather than fuzzier reputation issues. Public blocklists may not correlate with mailbox providers' internal data. A block on two separate major MBPs suggests a network issue, focusing on IP reputation.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Spamhaus.com explains that newly registered domains are often listed on the DBL (Domain Block List) as a general practice to combat spam. This listing is usually temporary and lifted after about a month if the domain is legitimate and doesn't engage in spamming activities.
Documentation from RFC-Editor.org explains that the HELO/EHLO domain should be a valid, resolvable domain name associated with the sending server. Inconsistencies or invalid configurations can trigger spam filters and deliverability issues.
Documentation from Gmail Help outlines best practices for bulk email senders, including authenticating email, avoiding spammy content, making unsubscribing easy, and monitoring feedback loops to identify and resolve deliverability problems. It recommends gradual increase of email volumes.
Documentation from Microsoft.com recommends checking IP and domain reputation using services like Sender Score and Talos. The documentation also suggests ensuring proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is set up correctly and monitoring bounce messages to identify specific issues.