|
Blacklists
are lists of IP addresses and domain names that are considered
to be sources of spam. If you appear on a blacklist the chances
are it will have a massive effect on your email campaign as
much as 40% of your list could be blocked.
Generally
blacklists tend to be hyped – they don’t tend
to be permanent and are harder to get on than many people
would lead you to believe.
Of
course if you are on a shared IP address with your email service
provider you will of course be at a much higher risk of appearing
on a blacklist when your email is sent as there are sometimes
hundreds of organisations all using the same IP. If you find
that this is an issue for you then reputable email service
providers will be able to supply you with a dedicated IP address.
In
the UK there tend to be five main blacklists that marketers
can land on. There are many more but these don’t tend
to be widely used or are aimed at the type of spam sent from
hijacked PC’s.
Here
is an overview of those five blacklists
Spamcop
This is the main blacklist used across the Internet. You will
appear on here if your IP address receives a spam complaint.
Generally you will not get listed for more than a few minutes
with a single complaint but the more complaints you get over
time the longer you will be listed. Generally all Spamcop
listings result in de-listing within 24 hours.
Messagelabs
This is not a public blacklist but a blacklist maintained
by MessageLabs, an email security and filtering company for
their clients. This tends to be generated on user complaints.
Listings on this can be more permanent and it is up to your
email service provider to help you get removed.
AOL
It is not just spam complaints that will get you blocked by
AOL. You can become blacklisted for high bounce rates, badly
configured message headers, not having reverse DNS set-up,
high volumes, domain blocks or sending directly via certain
ISP’s such as BT Broadband and not utilising their SMTP
server.
AOL
detail their acceptable use policies on their postmaster website.
If you are sending high volumes of email you will need to
be registered as a “Bulk emailer”. Email service
providers will almost have certainly gained a whitelisting
accreditation with AOL for you and should have feedback loops
in place to unsubscribe anyone that reports your email as
spam.
Outblaze
Similar to Messagelabs, Outblaze provide a managed anti-spam
solution. Their filtering utilises a number of public blacklists
along with their own monitoring of spam complaints. One complaint
is enough to trigger a blacklisting although removal is fairly
straightforward.
Spamhaus
There are a number of types of filters from Spamhaus. The
only one you need to worry about is the “SBL”
which is a list of reported spam addresses. Others look at
hijacked spam sources that should not be an issue for you.
|
