reputation

Spamhaus Blocklist Removal Center is no more (soon)

March 4, 2021March 4, 2021 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

Earlier today, Spamhaus announced via their News blog that their Blocklist Removal Center is being sunset. The organization indicated the decade-old page needed a refresh to improve its usefulness to users of all technical skill levels. The new page, dubbed IP and Domain Reputation Checker, contains a single field used to check both IPs and domains against Spamhaus-hosted blocklists.

Performing a lookup on a blocked IP address results in a user-friendly page indicating the IP is blocked with additional detail about which list(s) and why:

The Spamhaus results page that indicates your IP is on a blocklist. It features details about the listing and the Removal process.

In addition, the page also provides clear delisting instructions and some additional insight about the pertinent blocklist:

Spamhaus blocklist results page, continued.

Throughout, the information retains a friendly and helpful tone, acknowledging that most people who end up on this page are likely victims of bad practices (whether their own or others’) and not guilty of outright malice. And for those who are guilty of outright malice? They’re probably not getting delisted either way.

– BG

The old switcheroo

August 15, 2019August 16, 2019 by Brad, posted in Best Practices, Delivery Essentials

We’ve talked before about domain and IP reputation, and how mailbox providers use each to determine whether the mail you send reaches the inbox or languishes in the depths of the spam folder. Since so much of your sender reputation is tied to your IP and domain, many senders have the idea that the solution to delivery issues is to simply fire up a new IP, domain, or both, granting yourself the ultimate “do-over” with the mailbox providers. There’s just one problem with that theory…

It’s wrong. Last week, 250ok’s Beth Kittle published a great piece on the fallacy of this “email myth.” (If you haven’t yet, go read her post and commit it to memory.) Beth’s illustration of the incognito party guest is a great analogy for how providers spot your mail even when sent from new infrastructure and how your misdeeds will find you there if you continue to use bad practices.

But what happens when you do see a benefit from switching? Over the past few years I’ve spoken with dozens of marketers who had an example of a situation where their deliverability improved when switching to a new IP or domain. They performed a few tests on the new infrastructure and – lo and behold – they got to the inbox! Because of this, these clients often didn’t believe my warnings that new IPs or domains wouldn’t fix the problem – they were more concerned with temporary gains (and quite a few just assumed they’d talk their way into another IP once the new one started to tank). Don’t miss this point: your deliverability may improve when you switch to a new IP or domain – but only temporarily.

I’ll provide an analogy of my own, gleaned from a former coworker who compared IP and domain reputation to telephone caller ID. If you get unwanted calls from a telemarketer, you learn to stop answering when their number shows up on the caller ID. After days of unanswered calls, if the telemarketer dials you from a new number you just might pick up to find out who’s on the other end. As soon as you hear the voice of the unwanted caller on the other end, you’ll hang up and make sure you don’t answer calls from the new number as well.

This is how mailbox providers and spam filters operate – while it’s possible your first mailing might see better performance, as soon as they identify you’re the same sender they blocked before you’ll see those numbers fall off right away. As Beth notes, their algorithms are very advanced and they will quickly find out who you are. If you want to improve your deliverability, there are no shortcuts – you’ll have to put in the work to improve your practices.

– BG

R.I.P. (some) AOL Postmaster tools

April 4, 2018April 4, 2018 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

AOLrep Though most senders may be trying to pin down why Gmail isn’t displaying their images by default, there are still other mailbox providers out there to worry about. AOL, for instance, recently disabled their reputation checker and rDNS lookup tools while many of us were enjoying the long Easter holiday weekend (thanks to Word to the Wise for the heads up).

Gmail’s Postmaster Tools and Microsoft’s SNDS may have provided more data points, but the AOL reputation check was a great way to see at-a-glance where you stood with one of the major mailbox providers. It may not have been perfect, but I must say I’m a bit sad to see it go. Chalk is up as yet another casualty in the ever-changing email landscape.

– BG

Don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation

August 25, 2017October 20, 2017 by Brad, posted in Best Practices

Chances are, you’re reading this on the internet right now. And if so, you’ve probably heard the word “reputation” thrown around a lot this week thanks to Taylor Swift and her new album announcement (I prefer Joan Jett, thanks). While reputation may be seeing a moment in the pop culture space, its place in email has been long established. A good sender reputation is paramount for a successful email program, and a bad reputation can lose you thousands in revenue on a single campaign. So why, then, do so many organizations treat it so carelessly?

Taylor Swift's Reputation album cover — Mert & Marcus

Case in point: I’ve worked with marketers who have partnerships with other organizations in which they cross-promote each other’s products. A common arrangement, no doubt, and in most cases mutually beneficial. Often one party reaches out to me or another consultant asking how they can protect their domain reputation from any damage caused by the cross-promotion.

When I get this question, I typically first ask if they believe there is a legitimate risk of damage to their sender reputation. If so, why? Are they partnering with an organization with poor email practices? And if they are that concerned about the reputation of this partner “bleeding over” into their own domain, why do they continue to do business with them?

Many senders seem to feel they can overcome these risks with some technical sleight-of-hand: using a different IP address or domain, redirecting links through different servers, etc. While these tricks may work temporarily, mailbox providers have become extremely advanced in their filtering. These practices are often associated with spammers and malicious senders, so using them can cause even more damage to your reputation when the providers start to associate them with your brand.

In email, just as in life, the parties with whom you associate can tarnish your good name. Doing business with disreputable email senders will start to impact your deliverability and brand reputation. In fact, Google even uses factors like web and search reputation as part of their mail filtering algorithms. Technology has led to the increasing intersection of our public and private lives – we’ve all heard the stories of folks who got fired after an inflammatory social media post was discovered. In the same way, every aspect of your brand’s digital presence is connected and has the potential to impact your email program.

If you have a high level of concern that your actions or partnerships will cause damage to your sender reputation, you’re probably right. Instead of looking for ways around it and causing more damage, explore ways you can generate additional traffic and revenue without the additional risk. Vet your partners carefully – make sure their practices don’t sink the hard work you’ve put in to establish your own good reputation.

– BG

Deliverability 101: IP address and domain reputation

July 27, 2017July 28, 2017 by Brad, posted in Deliverability 101, Delivery Essentials

Reputation can be very important in all walks of life, and email is no different. For senders with a good reputation, mail is more likely to be delivered to the inbox, giving your recipients more chances to read and interact. On the other hand, if your reputation is “not so hot,” you’ll be more likely to see your messages end up in the spam folder or even rejected altogether. So what exactly is this mystical “reputation,” and how is it determined?

IP Address Reputation

Before we address (no pun intended) the reputation aspect, let’s have a brief refresher on the nature of IP addresses. Every device connected to the internet – computer, router, even your smart thermostat – is assigned a numeric value known as the Internet Protocol address. This IP address is how your mail server is identified on the internet. When you send mail to a recipient, their mail provider will see where the message originated, identified by that IP address.

Most inbound mail servers will also attempt to use that IP address to determine whether the sender of the mail is trustworthy. If mail from that IP address is often sent to invalid addresses, or the mail generates too many complaints, the inbound server may choose to route incoming messages from that server to spam, or block them outright. Many mailbox providers also use third-party IP address blacklists like Spamhaus or Spamcop, choosing to filter or reject mail from IPs that appear on those lists.

A few years ago, IP address was the gold standard for sender reputation. As content filters that looked for “spam words” became less effective (MILLI0NS OF DOLLAR$ IN VI4GRA, anyone?), IP reputation helped receivers identify habitual bad senders. The receivers could then act on all mail sent from those servers instead of chasing down ever-morphing content to filter inbound mail. This often caused issues for ESPs with smaller clients, because many clients were often sending from the same IP address (This is one of the reasons many ESPs tend to be more strict with shared-IP clients – because mail you send can impact delivery for many other senders on your IP).

A fact that is not widely known outside tech circles is that the internet is running out of IP addresses. As a result, a new standard for IP addresses was created: IPv6. This standard allows for a seemingly infinite number of IP addresses – theoretically 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 to be exact. With that many IP addresses, anyone whose IP is blocked can simply start using a different IP address, essentially bypassing IP address-based filtering.

Domain Reputation

There are times that an IP address alone doesn’t give the whole picture. The shared IP pools used by some ESPs, as mentioned above, are a prime example. Another example might occur when multiple divisions of a single company or organization use the same IP addresses to send mail. Because of this, and the onset of the IPv6 standard, domain reputation has become increasingly important in mail delivery.

How domain reputation is checked can vary depending on the mail server. Some providers check only the domain the mail is actually sent from, while others look at all the domains in the message headers. Some providers, including Google, check every domain in the body of the message as well. So if you send your mail from example@example.com, you can bet the reputation of example.com will be checked, but other domains in your message could be checked as well. If you are using an ESP or other hosted mail solution, there may be domains in the header that belong to your host that will also be checked (another reason authentication is so important). And don’t forget those links in the body! Many filters will block a message if it contains links to domains that have been flagged as spam or dangerous. If you’re linking to a domain you don’t own, it’s a good idea to check its reputation using one of the handful of free online tools available (we’ve compiled a few on our Resources page).

Not surprisingly, a domain’s reputation is typically impacted by mail sent from that domain or using that domain in the body. However, it can also be affected by the reputation of that domain on the web as a whole. If a specific website has gotten a bad reputation for, say, gaming Google’s search engines or potentially scamming customers, that can also impact mail delivery.

The ‘Secret Sauce’ of Sender Reputation

When it comes to actually filtering inbound email, every mailbox provider uses a unique combination of factors to determine whether mail reaches the inbox. For many providers, IP address reputation still ranks at or near the top of the list of these factors. Domain reputation is typically very close behind, if not in the top spot. After that, there are typically various ingredients that make up the proprietary methods used by each organization. Trying to figure out the secret sauce for each ISP is a fruitless effort – even if you do manage to find a trick that bypasses or overcomes a specific filter for a time, it will invariably change and you’ll be left looking for another backdoor.

While the specific components of spam filters change constantly, your sender reputation – both IP and domain – will continue to play the largest role in getting your mail to the inbox. Manage that reputation well, and you’ll save yourself a lot of delivery headaches.

For more information on IP addresses or the IPv6 standard, check out these resources:
What is an IP Address? on HowStuffWorks
Word to the Wise – IPv6 archives
IPv6.com – A Beginner’s Look

– BG

Return Path will offer Certification for Domain Reputation

April 13, 2016June 28, 2016 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

Return Path has long been a fixture in the email delivery community as a provider of tools for monitoring and improving inbox delivery rates, in addition to their newer data and intelligence products. One of Return Path’s most well-known offerings is their Return Path Certified program (formerly Sender Score Certification), which provides some additional metrics and benefits at certain ISPs for senders who meet the high standards of the program.

Certification has previously been available only to clients on a dedicated IP with an established sending history, but today the company announced their forthcoming Domain Certification – allowing senders on shared IPs and pools to use their domain reputation as the basis for certification.

With so much of the industry moving towards domain-based reputation and the advent of IPv6, this allows many good but small or inconsistent senders to reap the benefits of the program. Over the years I’ve personally worked with many clients who wanted to be certified but didn’t qualify, so I’m sure there’s a sizable market for this service. It will be interesting to see how the benefits at different ISPs play out – are they the same as the IP certification? Given that not all ISPs weigh domain reputation as heavily as IP, it seems there would have to be at least minor changes.

Domain Certification is currently in beta, but senders interested in beta testing can reach out to the Return Path team through the link posted above to get involved.

– BG