White Paper: Why Your E-mails Are Blacklisted

Why do your e-mails get blacklisted? According to a white paper by e-mail service provider FreshAddress, blacklisting can typically be boiled down to three things:

• Bouncing e-mail addresses
• Receivers clicking their "This is Spam" button
• Spam traps triggered by Honeypot e-mail addresses

In the white paper, "Snakes in Your database," FreshAddress CEO Bill Kaplan considers those snakes that correspond to the three key reasons that lead ISPs and their thousands of e-mail servers and computer algorithms to block your e-mails:

1. Your bounce rate is too high: All IPs have bounce thresholds. If you exceed a pre-determined ratio of bouncing vs. deliverable messages, the ISP will put a dynamic block on your e-mail campaign.
2. Your complaint rate is too high: ISPs track the clicks of the “This is Spam” button and will block your campaign if they see too many complaints from recipients.
3. You are e-mailing too many spamtrap and honeypot e-mail addresses: These addresses are not owned by individual users; instead they are used by ISPs to monitor unsolicited e-mail. Posted on newsgroups and Websites, these addresses were originally designed to catch spammers who build their databases by spidering the Web for e-mail addresses or using dictionary attacks. Unfortunately, these decoy e-mail addresses also appear in many rented lists and malicious registrations.