In this article, we will explore some potential reasons why a domain may get blacklisted and provide recommendations on how to address these issues.
What leads to a domain being blacklisted
- Receiving spam complaints
If email recipients report your messages as spam, email providers will deem it credible, believing the content is not valuable to the recipient.
Even if your list is legitimate and consists of opted-in users, a single click on the ‘mark as spam’ button is counted as a spam complaint.
The greater the number of complaints, the higher the chances that your domain will be blacklisted.
- Using poor-quality email lists or addresses
A high bounce rate (above five percent) due to low-quality lists can lead recipient email providers to suspect that your list is not opted-in or up to date.
Furthermore, sending emails to spam trap addresses will also result in getting blacklisted.
- Sending the same email to multiple recipients / Email Blasting
Sending nearly identical emails to a large audience can trigger spam alerts.
Non-personalized emails are often categorized as spam since they are perceived to lack value for the recipient.
- Exceeding sending limits / Spam sending rates and volumes
Sending a large volume of emails in a single day can raise alarms for recipient email providers.
Additionally, if there is no gap or consistent time interval between those emails, they will also be flagged as spam.
Preventing blacklisting of your domain
- Avoid spammy email content
There are keywords commonly associated with spam that should be avoided.
Words such as ‘free’, ‘money’, ‘risk-free’, ‘apply now’, etc., should be carefully managed.
- Monitor the bounce rate of your email campaigns (when using an email marketing service)
A quick route to getting your domain blacklisted is by having a high bounce rate.
Ensure you have a system in place to regularly validate your data and verify that email addresses are still active.
Remove bounced addresses from your campaigns to prevent sending follow-ups to them.
- Adjust your sending volume and frequency
If you send too many emails simultaneously, you are likely to find your domain blacklisted sooner or later.
To avoid this, keep your daily email count below 100 per mailbox.
- Ensure your domain has DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records properly configured
DMARC, which stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance,” is an email authentication, policy, and reporting protocol.
It builds upon the SPF and DKIM protocols, providing a link to the author (“From:”) domain name, policies for handling authentication failures, and reporting from receivers to senders, enhancing protection against fraudulent emails.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) helps safeguard email users from identity theft and content tampering.
It does this by providing clear identification of the signer’s identity along with an encrypted “hash” of the content of the message.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) serves as an anti-spoofing measure that checks whether an incoming email from a domain originated from a host authorized to send mail for that domain.
Please contact our support team to verify whether your domain has DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records set up correctly.
NOTE:
Keep in mind that despite implementing the above measures, your domain could still be blacklisted, as this is ultimately determined by recipient email providers, which is beyond our control.