Tips To Avoid Email Blacklists

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Published on February 14, 2020

Your business email list is your lifeline and essential to you. Isn’t it? and what if your lifeline gets blacklist? How can you avoid email blacklists? That is something that happens when your IP ends up on an email blacklist. But what exactly email blacklist is all about? Let us explain what it is and how to avoid it. Email blacklisted means that your email’s address, domain or IP address is not on the trusted list. This means that your emails are marked as spam, and most of the time not delivered to your chosen recipient. If your organization relies on sending emails externally, this could mean major disruption. There are numerous things you can do to avoid being blacklisted, so here are a few tips to avoid email blacklists:

Tips to avoid email blacklists

Tips to avoid email blacklists

Install & Update Anti-Virus

The major cause of domain or IP address being blacklisted is a virus on the network sending spam email to thousands of random email addresses. In order to stop this, simply install and update the anti-virus program. You should set the program to update at least every four hours.

Stop Sending Mass Marketing Emails Through Desktop Client

General information, newsletters, special discounts and offers are common in everyone’s inbox, but if you send a newsletter to a large number of email addresses you should not use your email client, such as Outlook, to do this. If anybody on the email mail list reports the newsletter as spam to any authorities then they can blacklist your email address or your IP address. If you do want to send a large number of emails then use a third-party application such as SalezShark

Make an SPF record

Creating SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record is important as it tells the world who can send emails as your domain. This means that only your exchange server can send emails from your email domain, in such a scenario, you would add the external IP address of where your exchange server is located. Other email servers can check this and block any email, not from the correct server.

Don’t Use a Smarthost

A lot of organizations use Microsoft’s Exchange server to manage their emails. The Exchange server should not use a Smarthost but it should use DNS (Domain Name Services) to send emails. Because using a Smarthost means that you are sending emails through a shared server and one that is not trusted, therefore it is more likely to be blocked at the recipient’s end.

Apply Firewall to Stop Unauthorised Devices Sending Emails

If you have an email server or a central exchange on your network then that should be the only device able to send emails. Make sure your firewall only allows your email server to send an email on port 25 or 587. Most organization firewalls can do this and you do not need expensive systems to make this happen.

Email campaigns can be a complex beast to tame, however implementing a few tips to avoid email blacklists and you are not the victim of spam and attackers.