Are You Black Listed?

For those of you operators who have started to think outside the box and start growing your own customer database, some of you may have experience being black listed or grey listed.

Blacklists help keep the Internet clear of unsolicited email by giving mail providers a list of naughty email senders they can automatically block and keep away from inboxes. But sometimes legitimate senders get caught up in the crossfire.

For some of you, you might think that your emails are reaching your whole database. The reality is that you might only be reaching 50% or even less.

Golf Courses who are sending out bulk email are finding out the hard way. They are typically using an antiquated bulk email system or some sort of homemade contraption.

Here are a few tricks to help keep you off the Black Lists:

I. Email Validation
When someone registers on your website to access specials, or a contest, do they have to validate their email? Can someone just enter any old email address? If the answer is yes, then there are 2 issues that come into play. (1) You might think you have 5,000 people in your database, but you really only have 2,000 people with valid email addresses. (2) When someone enters an invalid email address, and you send out a bulk email, the World Wide Web will penalize you for sending out emails to addresses that don't exist. Better yet, someone enters an email that is not theirs, and the recipient will flag your email as spam. Getting flagged as spam is
the fasted way to get black listed.

II. SPF records
Today, nearly all abusive e-mail messages carry fake sender addresses. The victims whose addresses are being abused often suffer from the consequences, because their reputation gets diminished and they have to disclaim liability for the abuse, or waste their time sorting out misdirected bounce messages.You probably have experienced one kind of abuse or another of your e-mail address yourself in the past, e.g. when you received an error message saying that a message allegedly sent by you could not be delivered to the recipient, although you never sent a message to that address.
SPF records can protect your email address from being forged. Ask your webhost provider to set up your SPF records.

III. Opt Out Function
As I stated in section one, people who receive your email, and click on the “report as spam button”, will definitely secure your fate to appear on the black lists. Most black lists say that if 3% of your emails are reported as spam, then you are considered a spammer. The trick is to make it as easy as possible to unsubscribe. At the footer of every bulk email, you should have an “Opt Out” or “Remove Me From Your Mailing List” button. It should be automated and simple for the recipient to be excluded from your database. If not, then your chances of being black listed will be even greater.

IV. Use a Reputable Service Provider
Commercial email is getting more difficult with the advent of the CAN-SPAM Act and the increase in ISP filtering. Staying up-to-date on current legislation and policies of ISPs and anti-spam groups is difficult to do on your own. Reputable service providers such as Course Logix dedicate significant resources to managing ISP relationships, monitoring email deliveries, and evaluating current email laws. If you do not have similar resources or an in-house expert, outsourcing could be the best way to get your messages delivered.

Follow these 4 tricks above, and you will definitely improve your deliverability rates. If you are interested in a free email system audit, please call us at 1-800-599-6310 or e-mail bpaul@course-logix.com