What should you do if a client wants to send unsolicited emails?

Key findings

• Reputation Damage: Sending unsolicited email volume, particularly when increased abruptly, can severely damage a sender's reputation, leading to blocklistings and non-delivery.
• Compliance Risks: Unsolicited emails often violate anti-spam laws like the CAN-SPAM Act, incurring legal penalties and further deliverability roadblocks.
• Technical Failures: Immediate consequences include various bounce errors (e.g., Yahoo/AOL 4.4.2, Gmail 4.4.7) and direct blocks by ISPs like Comcast and Cox due to spam complaints or policy violations.
• Limited Recourse: Direct appeals to postmasters for unblocking are rarely effective when the issue stems from unsolicited sending. Evidence of improved sending habits is required.
• Client Resistance: Clients often resist slowing down or changing their strategy, prioritizing perceived low cost and volume over actual inbox placement and engagement.

Key considerations

• Educate Clients: Clearly explain the deliverability consequences, legal risks, and the negative ROI of unsolicited email campaigns. Highlight that email is not ideal for initial prospecting.
• Implement Best Practices: Even with client resistance, proactively implement deliverability best practices such as purging complaints, unsubscribing hard bounces, establishing a robust soft bounce policy, and setting up DKIM and other authentication standards.
• Manage Expectations: Set realistic expectations regarding recovery time for sender reputation. Emphasize that there are no quick fixes or magic solutions for overcoming blocklistings caused by poor sending practices.
• Assess Risk: Evaluate the long-term viability of working with clients unwilling to adapt their sending practices. Persistent unsolicited mailing can harm your own reputation or that of your ESP. Consider if the engagement is worth the potential negative impact, as discussed in the effects of unsolicited link building and sales emails.

Key opinions

• Challenging Client Expectations: Clients often expect immediate results from high-volume sends and may be resistant to advice about slowing down or changing strategy, often due to perceived low cost.
• Qualification is Key: It's crucial to thoroughly qualify clients beforehand to ensure their marketing goals align with ethical and effective email practices.
• Email is Not for Prospecting: Many marketers agree that email is not the best channel for initial, unsolicited prospecting, advocating for its role later in the sales funnel.
• No Magic Bullets: There are no quick fixes or shortcuts to repair a damaged sender reputation or bypass blocklistings caused by unsolicited emails, despite some clients' beliefs.
• Ethical Dilemmas: Marketers may feel ethically compromised helping clients engage in practices that are widely considered spam, leading to personal stress.

Key considerations

• Prioritize Deliverability: Always emphasize that sending to engaged recipients at a sustainable volume is paramount for maintaining a good sender reputation and avoiding emails going to spam.
• Implement Clean-up Actions: Insist on implementing core hygiene measures, such as proper complaint purging, hard bounce management, and a robust soft bounce policy to mitigate immediate damage.
• Advocate for Consent: Strongly advocate for permission-based email marketing. Remind clients that receiving unsolicited emails can cause recipients to report messages as spam, impacting deliverability, as detailed in this article on email consent.
• Manage Client Relationships: Be prepared to walk away from clients whose practices are unfeasible or harmful to your professional integrity and the client's long-term email health. Avoiding issues like the dangers of scraping emails and ignoring CAN-SPAM is critical.

Key opinions

• No Direct Pleading: Experts agree that directly contacting mailbox providers to plead their case for unblocking is ineffective. Postmasters primarily assist with false positives or offer general advice, not to lift blocklistings for spammers.
• Time-Sensitive Recovery: Repairing a damaged sender reputation takes significant time and requires consistent evidence of improved sending habits, rather than attempts to force immediate resolution.
• Consent is Paramount: If prospecting means sending unsolicited emails, then mailbox providers are justified in blocking such senders, categorizing them as spammers.
• Not All Clients Can Be Helped: Some clients are unwilling to accept advice that contradicts their preferred 'batch and blast' approach, making it impossible for deliverability experts to genuinely improve their situation.
• Volume vs. Engagement: Forcing high email volume without regard for engagement or consent is a recipe for deliverability failure, as volume alone is not a valid success metric.

Key considerations

• Focus on Engagement: Advise clients to shift from volume-centric sending to engagement-focused strategies, reducing volume and targeting only genuinely interested recipients. This aligns with modern inbox provider algorithms.
• Emphasize Sender Habits: Clearly communicate that mailbox providers look for sustained evidence of good sending habits. Initial efforts like list scrubbing, DKIM implementation, and managing complaints are steps towards this, but require ongoing commitment.
• Prioritize Long-Term Health: Advocate for a long-term strategy over short-term volume pushes. Sustainable email marketing builds positive sender reputation over time, leading to consistent inbox placement. This requires considering how to manage unengaged subscribers.
• Set Boundaries: Deliverability experts should be prepared to decline or terminate engagements with clients who are unwilling to modify their unsolicited sending practices, as continued association can negatively impact the expert's own professional standing, potentially leading to association with email blacklists.

Key findings

• Legal Mandate: The CAN-SPAM Act sets strict rules for commercial email, requiring truthful header information, a clear subject line, and a functioning unsubscribe mechanism.
• Consent Requirement: While CAN-SPAM doesn't require prior opt-in, it grants recipients the right to opt-out, and mandates that unsubscribe requests be honored promptly. Many international laws (like GDPR) are stricter, requiring explicit consent.
• Unsubscribe Link: Every commercial email must include a clear and conspicuous way for recipients to opt out of future emails, processed within 10 business days.
• Physical Address: Commercial emails must include the sender's valid physical postal address.
• Consequences of Non-Compliance: Violations of anti-spam laws can lead to significant penalties, including fines per email, and severely damage sender reputation, leading to blocklistings.

Key considerations

• Adhere to CAN-SPAM: Businesses must ensure all commercial emails, even those considered unsolicited, fully comply with the CAN-SPAM Act's requirements to avoid legal issues and maintain basic deliverability, as noted by the Federal Trade Commission.
• Respect Unsubscribe Requests: Documentation consistently stresses the importance of easy and prominent unsubscribe links. Failure to provide or honor them can lead to increased spam complaints and punitive actions from mailbox providers and regulators, as highlighted in insights from customer.io.
• Monitor Deliverability Metrics: Regularly monitor metrics like spam complaint rates, bounce rates, and blocklist status. High complaint rates for unsolicited mail directly indicate poor list quality and recipient dissatisfaction, triggering ISP filters.
• Prioritize Permission: While CAN-SPAM doesn't strictly require opt-in, best practices and global regulations (like GDPR) strongly advise explicit consent. This proactive approach significantly reduces spam complaints and improves deliverability compared to sending unsolicited mail.