Is My Email Blacklisted? Must-Know Insights for Marketers

Ensuring your emails get to your recipients unhindered is as crucial to email marketing as having your blood flow freely through your body, as emails are the lifeline of your business. 

However, some emails never make it to the recipient’s inbox.

Some 46% of 347 billion emails sent daily are considered spam, and 20% of legit emails do not reach recipients. Knowing how to prevent this from happening is critical for a healthy and efficient email marketing campaign.

On a historical note, the term “blacklist” or “get blacklisted” goes back to the early 17th century, when in 1624 King James I of England coined the term, putting the enemies of state on the blacklist. Since that time, the process of blacklisting has evolved and expanded to exclude unwanted individuals deemed to be a threat to the political status quo from participating in political life, joining certain professions, or enjoying certain privileges. 

Getting off the royal blacklist required appealing to the King and making some hard concessions. We will try to explain here how to get off an email blacklist painlessly. 

While King James kept those parchment blacklists close to his chest and exercised his royal power to either put his vassals on them or absolve them, the modern-day blacklisting represents a collection of domains and IP addresses blocked from sending emails due to spam activity. Blacklists may be run by email providers such as Gmail or Outlook or security companies such as Proofpoint, Cloudmart, or others. 

Signs You Got Blacklisted

Among the most common telltale signs that you’ve been blacklisted are: 

• Decreased email deliverability and lower engagement. How will you notice that? You will see a drop in engagement, such as opens and clicks, regardless of the unabated email sending.

• Lower click rates is a valid reason to suspect that you got blacklisted. Fewer CTR signal either a fading engagement or an outright blacklisting. A positive sign of blacklisting is your emails getting filtered out and being sent to spam. So, once you see a sudden drop in your click rates, it would be wise to check if your IP or domain have been blacklisted.

• A growing number of rejected or bounced emails is another reason to check if your IP address and domain are safe. God forbid, but if you suddenly see rejected emails piling up, first you need to understand whether these are bounces or rejections, as they are different. An email “bounces” when the recipient’s server can’t deliver it due to an invalid address or a full inbox. Rejection is a more sinister sign as it signals there are authentication issues or, more probably, a spam filter.

To timely undertake measures to counter the blacklisting, you need to keep an eye on these four signs.  

How to Check if Your Email Is Blacklisted

Now that your suspicion that you have been blacklisted has grown stronger as all the telltale signs are in place, you will want to run an email blacklist check. 

An easy way to perform a check is to go to one of the websites that offer direct blacklist checks. These platforms use lookup tools that enable you to check the blacklists directly by entering the IP address and running a search. Among the widely used blacklist checkers are: Barracuda, Cisco/Ironport, Invaluement, Microsoft, Proofpoint, Spanhaus, Spamcop, and others.

Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail maintain their own spam filters to determine whether to flag an email as spam or reject it downright. These major email providers have the resources to keep an eye on mass addresses, look for keywords associated with spam, notice that an IP address sends out scores of emails, and generally be on the lookout for other signs suggesting spam. 

Common Causes of Being Blacklisted

Not to get into the blacklisting trap, one needs to be aware of the common causes that trigger such actions. 

The most common among them are: 

1. Buying email lists. 
2. Falling into spam traps.
3. Using ISP providers like Gmail or Outlook for sending out mass emails. 
4. An increasing flow of complaints from recipients as a suspiciously great number of them mark down your messages as spam or choose to unsubscribe. 
5. Telltale signs that emails or IP addresses are used for fraud, such as malware, phishing, ransomware, etc.

Other triggers, such as a high rate of hard bounces or an overwhelming number of messages sent over a certain period, could also result in your emails getting blacklisted. 

Steps to Take if You Are Blacklisted

Blacklisting does not doom your business, as it is not as bad as it seems. To avoid falling into this trap, we recommend you do this:

That does not help?

The next move would be reaching out to the blacklist operator and, if needed, requesting a delisting and explaining what you have done to address the issue. 

Finally, we advise you to check your sender reputation, a sort of your credit score as a sender. That can be done by using such tools as Sender Score, Postmaster Tools, MXToolBox, or Tallos Intelligence. These are just some of the many available out there.

Best Practices to Avoid Being Blacklisted

Let’s sum up here how you can avoid getting trapped in a blacklist pitfall.

The Role of Email Verification

You don’t want to send you emails into a void. To make sure there is a real person on the receiving end, emails need to be verified. This is done by sending a code or an activation link to an email address for the recipient to activate it from their inbox.

Among all the measures to avoid the blacklisting that we described earlier, email verification is by far the most straightforward and logical. It checks all the boxes: 

• Protects your sender reputation, the most precious asset in your email marketing, by ensuring that your emails go to real people and real addresses. In a nutshell, your sender reputation depends on how often your emails are marked as spam, how often they are opened, or how often they are unsubscribed. So, your sender reputation score is as important as your personal credit score, as it directly impacts deliverablity and the overall impact of your marketing effort.
• Prevents bounces, as it minimizes the chances of sending emails to non-existent addresses. That is important because the more often emails bounce, the lower is your deliverability score. The result is sad: more emails end up in spam.
• Keeps your email list up to date. An outdated emailing list is a sure way to the failure of your email marketing campaign. An updated emailing list means that all addresses on it are current, valid, and—most importantly—that you have the right to send you marketing emails to those addresses as the recipients have consented to that.
• Cuts email marketing costs by eliminating inactive addresses. Each email you send out costs money, so by reducing those non-productive costs, you improve your bottom line.

Among many tools available online to verify your emails, Sendigram Email Checker stands out as a master key to resolving the most vexing emailing problems a business can encounter in marketing. The Checker offers the best of both worlds—ensures deliverability and reduces spam rates.

What to Do if You Can’t Get Off a Blacklist

Unfortunately, no matter how many preventive measures you have taken, you still can end up on a blacklist. Keep your cool and prepare to take the necessary steps to get off it. 

First, request removal by submitting a request to the blacklist provider. That is an easy step. However, you may have to prove you are a legitimate company caring about a better repute. In this case, the operator may ask you to send a re-permission request to your subscribers. They, in return, should agree to continue receiving emails from you. Before sending the removal request, you need to know which blacklist you are on. Visit their website to find out the specifics of the removal process. Normally, you will have to fill out a delisting request form where you will list actions you have taken to address the situation. The removal does not happen in a blink of an eye, so be patient.

Once bitten, twice shy. Once you get off the blacklist, maintaining your email list’s hygiene and strictly following the set of rules to avoid blacklisting gets more critical than before, as you have only one chance. Getting delisted after repeat blacklisting will be harder. 

Sometimes, if there is no way to remove your address from the list, you may need to start all over again with a new IP address. Truly, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

To Sum Up

Let’s end this on a high note. Luckily, we don’t live under the iron rule of King James I, and our blacklisting problems can be dealt with with relative ease.

Just follow these rules.

• First, make sure your subscribers are genuinely interested in what you send them. 
• Use double opt-ins.
• Further, always include an unsubscribe option to remove inactive or obsolete addresses. 
• Make your sender reputation stronger and more credible with personalized content with a human touch.
• Rule out spam by safeguarding your IP address from bots and malware.
• Beware of human errors—use forms and landing pages for sign-ups.
• Finally, verify your emails consistently so that your emails reach real people.

However, if all this does not help and you get blacklisted, do not give up—request a delisting.