Many legitimate senders face an increasing challenge of being designated as spam, even from their opt-in subscribers. People are being inundated with email and may inadvertently designate your emails as spam because they forgot that they have previously opted-in to receive your communications. In other cases, recipients may find it difficult to locate your unsubscribe link and simply find it easier to click the spam designation to remove you from their inbox.
For legitimate senders, it is important that you understand that subscriber behavior can be unpredictable and irrational at times. What was a conscious opt-in action one day can randomly turn into an unconscious spam action the next. The consequence of these actions is that it damages your IP reputation with the ISPs and if repeated, can lead to more drastic results that include delays, blocks and blacklisting.
Here are three best practices for senders to consider:
- Establish feedback loops with the ISP’s of your subscriber list so you can monitor abuse complaints.
- It is important to process and take action on abuse complaints on a continuous basis in order to maintain a good reputation with the ISP community. Failure to do so will inevitably lead to a poor reputation that will result in bigger sender issues.
- When senders unsubscribe, it is important to quickly take action and remove them from your email list. Failure to do so will most likely lead to recipients designating you as spam the next time you send them an email.
If legitimate senders view these best practices as a challenge within itself, they should consider outsourcing to an email deliverability and reputation management service provider, like SMTP.com. Such service providers will take care of the technical compliance configurations, the ongoing abuse monitoring and recommend solutions to resolve issues in order to keep your emarketing operations running smoothly.