Email Deliverability, Whitelisting, Blacklists, RBLs

Email Deliverability

As you probably know, email recipients have become more and more sensitive to spam.

When a recipient marks you as “spam” the major ISPs like gmail, yahoo, aol, comcast, msn, outlook and others will get notified and if they get too many notifications will report blacklist your or report you to a RBL (blacklist) database.

To avoid getting on an RBL – here are some useful tips.

Set a consistent schedule to avoid “spikes” in email sends
Don’t send too frequently – once a week at most is a good rule of thumb. You know your audience and will make the best choice.
Use “double opt-in” i.e. require your subscribers to click a link to verify their subscription
Keep you list clean – remove bounce emails
Use your brand’s name in your “from” line
Be careful of trigger words in subject lines
Check your reputation often senderscore.com is a free service
Check if you’re on blacklists using tools like mxtoolbox shown below
If you do high volumes of email i.e. (over 5000 emails per month) make sure:

To ensure the optimal deliverability, optimize your domain and configure your DNS with these tips:

Return Path Header (automatic for transactional emails/mass email)
TLS (SSL certificate)
DKIM (DNS)
DMARC (DNS)
SPF (DNS) - Implement Sender Policy Frameworks (SPF)
BIMI (DNS)
PTR (Reverse DNS) – requires Dedicated IP - make sure you have a PTR record set (for reverse DNS lookup)
SOA (DNS)

Your webmaster or IT team can help you make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck when sending emails.

Below we've offered several tools that can help you enhance the ability for your email to arrive where you send it. Remember in the end - the mail providers like Gmail, Yahoo, AT&T, Comcast and others - each have different rules. So you have to learn what they require to comply.

Good luck and happy emailing!

DNS

SPF Record - make sure it is working and is valid
https://www.kitterman.com/spf/validate.html?

Spam Database Lookup

Go here to see if you IP is "blacklisted" or listed as spam.
https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
https://www.dnsbl.info/
https://www.spamhaus.org/zen/

Sender Score Tools

Go here to see how you score as a "Sender" of mass/bulk email.

https://www.mail-tester.com/
https://www.mailgenius.com/
Fix the errors before sending bulk email to your list.

Domain / IP Checks

Go to these sites to check or troubleshoot your Domain and IP
https://senderscore.org/
https://mxtoolbox.com/
Fix the errors before sending bulk email to your list.

If you do see problems with delivery to your customers - it may just be some email providers have not "whitelisted" you yet - or your web host may be blocked for other users - so you need to configure your site to be clean.

Here are some common email providers and how to get unblocked.