How can I improve email deliverability for a client with a poor sender reputation and questionable email acquisition practices?

Key findings

• List quality: Co-registration and acquired, non-opt-in lists are primary drivers of poor sender reputation and low engagement.
• Ineffective tactics: Relying on new IP addresses and domains to bypass deliverability issues is a temporary, unsustainable solution that fails to address the underlying problems.
• Engagement deficit: Sending to unengaged subscribers actively harms sender reputation and inbox placement.
• Business conflict: Recommended deliverability best practices, such as culling large segments of a database or running re-opt-in campaigns, often conflict with business interests.

Key considerations

• Strategic shift: Prioritize a shift from quantity to quality in email sending, focusing on improving engagement metrics over maintaining large, unengaged lists. More information on how to improve your IP and domain reputation.
• Gradual improvements: Implement gradual changes, such as identifying and dropping non-engaged members, to mitigate business impact while improving deliverability. This can help prevent emails going to spam.
• Engaged core: Focus on building a strong sending reputation with a segment of highly engaged members. This forms a credible base for future list growth.
• List hygiene: Maintaining mailing list hygiene is crucial for improving sender reputation, as advised by Mailgun.

Key opinions

• Financial justification: Highlighting a significant drop in email earnings or click-through rates can be a strong argument for implementing necessary changes.
• Quality over quantity: Emphasizing that improved quality of sending to a smaller, engaged list will ultimately yield better results than sending to a vast, unengaged one.
• Risk mitigation: For clients with questionable practices, securing payment upfront is a practical consideration.
• Root cause focus: Beyond list issues, marketers suggest scrutinizing the content and value proposition of emails, as uncompelling or scammy offers can negate efforts to improve deliverability.

Key considerations

• Client education: Educate clients on the long-term benefits of deliverability best practices, even if they initially impact short-term metrics.
• Incremental changes: Propose actionable, incremental steps to improve deliverability, such as pruning a large, unengaged contact list.
• Transparency: Clearly outline the expectations and potential challenges, especially when recovering deliverability after sending to purchased lists.
• Content relevance: Focus on improving the relevance and quality of email content, as this directly impacts engagement and spam reports, as noted by Mailchimp.

Key opinions

• Eliminate harmful practices: Immediately stopping practices like co-registration and using non-opt-in lists is crucial for any meaningful recovery.
• Prune inactive subscribers: Removing unengaged subscribers, especially those older than 6 months, can quickly improve deliverability metrics and sender reputation.
• Rebuild from strength: Leverage highly engaged segments of the existing list as a foundation for rebuilding a positive sender reputation, without necessarily needing a new brand identity.
• Address content quality: The core issue might be uncompelling, borderline scammy offers, which no amount of technical fixes can entirely offset.
• Manage expectations: Be transparent with clients about the time and effort required for recovery, and consider upfront payment.

Key considerations

• Strategic combination: Combining efforts to remove inactive subscribers with a focus on engaged segments yields the best results. Learn more about improving a bad domain reputation.
• Long-term commitment: Emphasize that sustainable deliverability improvements require consistent good email habits over time.
• Ethical considerations: Evaluate whether the client is genuinely willing to change their practices to align with ethical email marketing standards.
• Incentivize compliance: If a re-opt-in campaign is considered, structure it to maximize response rates and clearly communicate its purpose. This is key to improving deliverability with a large, unengaged list.
• Professional fees: Ensure contracts are structured to compensate for time and effort, independent of unrealistic deliverability targets. For more, see the Twilio best practices.

Key findings

• Consent is crucial: Always obtain explicit consent, ideally through double opt-in, to ensure recipients genuinely want your emails and reduce spam complaints.
• List hygiene: Regularly clean email lists to remove inactive addresses, hard bounces, and known spam traps, which can severely damage sender reputation.
• Authentication standards: Implement and properly configure email authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to verify sender identity and prevent spoofing. Learn more about DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
• Engagement monitoring: Monitor engagement metrics like open rates, click rates, and complaint rates to gauge subscriber interest and identify potential deliverability issues.
• Subscriber experience: Provide relevant content, clear calls to action, and easy unsubscribe options to foster a positive subscriber experience.

Key considerations

• Sender reputation tools: Utilize tools like Google Postmaster Tools to track domain reputation and identify deliverability issues affecting your emails. Read the ultimate guide to Google Postmaster Tools domain reputation.
• Avoid blocklists: Implement practices that prevent your IP addresses or domains from being listed on email blocklists (or blacklists), as this can severely impede deliverability.
• Spam trap avoidance: Actively work to avoid hitting spam traps, which are email addresses used by ISPs and anti-spam organizations to identify senders of unsolicited email. More on spam traps.
• Adapt to changes: Stay informed about changes in ISP policies and email regulations to maintain compliance and optimize deliverability. For example, Salesforce highlights the importance of robust authentication.