Countless businesses today rely on their email marketing efforts to communicate with customers and promote their products and services.
What happens if they can’t continue marketing this way? One major obstacle that can put a halt to any email marketing campaign is being added to an IP blocklist.
What Is an IP Blocklist?
An IP blocklist is a list that contains IP addresses that are thought to be responsible for distributing spam. Emails that are sent using these IPs are either routed to the spam folder or blocked outright.
These IP blocklists are monitored by spam filters that follow a set of criteria to assess if an email is spam-like or malicious. These criteria include the following:
- Policy listings: These listings occur when a receiving server doesn’t want to receive emails from specific geographical locations or internet service providers that have a history of not providing an unsubscribe option in their emails.
- Technical listings: These listings happen primarily because of problems with how the mail server itself has been configured. This could be due to incorrect reverse DNS records or missing banner greetings in the emails.
- Evidence-based listings. When a network server has received evidence of a specific sending IP address being involved in delivering unsolicited emails, they can find their IP added to a blocklist.
To be a successful email marketer, you need to ensure that your emails can be delivered directly to recipients while avoiding being blocklisted. Internet service providers (ISPs) use well-known IP blocklists like Spamhaus ZEN, CBL blocklist, and SpamCop blocklist.
For example, when mail servers have been blocklisted by Spamhaus ZEN, all emails that come from these specific servers won’t reach their recipients that are on an ISP that employs the service.
Keep in mind that most blocklists today maintain a standard before they blocklist servers. They would oftentimes release IP addresses and servers that have been listed after some time has passed.
How Does an IP Address Get Blocklisted?
Mail server IP addresses are listed in public blocklists regularly, especially when they share the same server with others. The following are the most common reasons why your hardware has been added to a blocklist:
Sending Numerous Emails
Email servers that constantly send out an abnormal amount of emails can result in them being flagged as spam. That’s why you should be careful how many emails you send out each week if you want to avoid being blocklisted.
One of the best practices in email marketing is to ensure each email sent provides high value to recipients. This approach will require you to consider your email content carefully, which results in spending more time to develop it.
Forwarding Suspicious Emails
Servers that relay spam to others the action will appear as if the spam came from you originally. Even if that’s not true, you can be implicated for such transfers and get your IP blocklisted.
This scenario is particularly common when another user on your server forwards a message to a second account on another ISP. That’s why many serious email marketers would avoid using shared servers since this can have a huge impact in terms of their email deliverability if they get added to a blocklist.
Having a High Bounce Rate
When spam filters notice that a considerable amount of bounced emails are associated with a single delivery, they will see this as an indicator of a faulty email list. This could be that the list is no longer updated or that it has been illegitimately obtained.
Although ISPs don’t have a specific threshold on the acceptable amount for bounce rates, industry benchmarks typically favor anywhere between 2 to 8%. You want to make sure that you don’t have a bounce rate higher than 8% to stay away from being added to an IP blocklist.
Receiving Many Spam Complaints
Consistently sending poor-quality messages to your recipients can easily annoy people leading them to mark your emails as spam. Once subscribers begin labeling you as such regularly, your internet service provider will be alerted of your email content as well as the quality of your mailing list.
When a sufficient number of complaints have been sent to your ISP, they will eventually get your IP address blocklisted.
One way to prevent receiving spam complaints is to incorporate an opt-in (or even double opt-in) to your email list.
Poor Email List Hygiene
Failing to maintain email lists by not removing inactive and unused email addresses will result in your emails bouncing more than you want them to.
ISPs that notice many emails being bounced back or being delivered to recipients who haven’t engaged with your content for quite some time are a sign of poor email list hygiene. When this continues for some time, your IP address can get blocklisted and your email deliverability will suffer.
A Virus Has Infected Your Device
Another common reason why people have found themselves added to a blocklist is that their devices have been infected by a malicious program.
As you go about your regular business on the web, you might have picked up a virus or other harmful software along the way. Active viruses could easily get your IP address blocklisted as a means to protect the recipient network’s integrity.
After getting rid of the virus, you could contact the blocklisting service and explain to them what happened.
You Are Using a Certain Type of App or Software
Some companies and ISPs will prevent using certain web applications, programs, or even browsers for various reasons. For businesses, they may also see an app to have potential security gaps that could lead to a breach later on.
Some examples of applications that could result in an IP ban are unknown operating systems and shady third-party browser programs.
How Can I Know if My IP Is Blocklisted?
Email senders have a few ways they can keep track of their IP blocklist status. The first thing you need to do, however, is to know the IP address of your current mail server.
If this is unknown to you, contact your web host and ask them for it. Most reputable web hosting service providers have good customer support and these people can help you learn about your DNS settings. These settings include your MX records, A records, and CNAME records.
With your IP address at the ready, go to one of the tools that can scan through blocklists and see if your business has been added to any of them. One of the best tools you can use is WhatIsMyIPAddress.
In case you find your company listed in one of the blocklists, you can send a request to have it removed. The website that does the listing will have instructions for you on how you can get yourself de-listed. Make sure that you follow all of the instructions carefully to maximize the success rate.
But before you send a removal request, you should analyze your email marketing strategy and make sure that you aren’t doing anything that would result in your IP being blocklisted.
As stated earlier, using a double opt-in subscription tactic is an ideal way to ensure you have a quality email list. You should also incorporate unsubscribe links and having your contact details show up in every email you send.
These techniques should ensure the best chances to continue marketing to the target audience that would love to receive emails from you.
4 Stages of IP Blocklist Removal
To get your IP address removed from an IP blocklist, it’s important to be aware of the 4 basic stages of being de-listed. These are:
1. The Discovery Stage
The first stage is when you need to know if your IP address has been added to a blocklist. You can do this by monitoring listings directly or using a tool that lets you do so. You want to keep a close watch on notifications you get such as complaints and warnings of low deliverability.
2. The Blocklist Evaluation Stage
The effect of being blocklisted can be different depending on the specific blocklist you’ve been listed on. Some of these lists may not affect your ability to send while others could prevent your emails from being delivered entirely.
It’s important to know which blocklist has your IP address and work on a solution to get it fixed as soon as possible.
3. The Action Stage
Now that you know what blocklist has you listed, it’s time to take action to have it resolved. Most blocklist websites will provide you with instructions on how to get de-listed from their listing.
When contacting these sites, it’s important to be professional and polite to avoid any issues. You should also show that you’re interested in fixing the problem before it becomes worse.
4. The Compliance Stage
Once you’ve completed the appropriate steps that would lead to solving the problem, you should contact the admin of the blocklist website. Letting the admin know that you’ve complied with their requirements can make a huge difference in getting de-listed.
However, it’s still up to the blocklist website whether they would manually de-list your IP address or wait a certain period to have it automatically removed.
Is It Important to Get De-Listed from an IP Blocklist?
As an email marketer, getting de-listed should be your number one priority as soon as you learn that your IP has been added to a blocklist. This is because being listed in one of these entities can result in your email deliverability going down.
When your email deliverability suffers, your ability to reach inboxes will be significantly hampered. This is especially important since popular blocklists like Spamhaus can be extremely difficult to have an IP address de-listed. Furthermore, many ISPs and email service providers use it as a reference.
Although smaller mailbox providers normally use the smaller and local blocklists, you also shouldn’t underestimate their ability to block your messages.
Overall, if you want to continue enjoying your ability to send emails, you should work on getting yourself de-listed from an IP blocklist as quickly as you can.
Conclusion
Spam is one of the most serious problems that continue to plague the world of email. That is why blocklists have been invented to reduce spam and help customers in email platforms have a better experience.
In case you find that you’ve been added to an IP blocklist, you should reach out to the appropriate listing and inform them that you want to remove your entry. Some blocklists may automatically retract a listing after some time while others can manually remove them if requested.
If you made an error, experienced being blocklisted, and have been de-listed, avoid making the same mistake again. You want to ensure that your email deliverability remains high so you can continue to have access to send emails without issues.
