Spam and Email Blacklist Check Tips

When sending emails, the biggest fear of any company is why they are not getting responses from their recipients. On average, the open rate of most emails is around 18% while the CTA is 4% to 5%. But this all changes when the domain or the IP you are using gets blacklisted. Start by running a spam email blacklist check.

What then? How can the companies make sure that their domains are not blacklisted? Therefore, you need to understand how blacklisting work and what it is.

What is a Blacklist?

“A Domain Name System-based Blackhole List (DNSBL) or Real-time Blackhole List (RBL) is an effort to stop email spamming. It is a “blacklist” of locations on the Internet reputed to send email spam.” Wikipedia

Getting your resources blacklisted means that the sender’s email will either land in the junk folder or will not get to the recipient at all. This happens because the domain name or IP address is in the blacklist. Most email service providers make use of public blacklist databases for their filtering algorithms. Therefore, when one service blocks the domain name or IP address, there are chances that it will also get blacklisted on other email service providers.

Why Email Service providers Blacklist IP and Domain Names?

• The emails contained spam message
• Users didn’t like the messages sent by the sender
• Multiple users had pressed the spam button in the emails leading to a permanent ban
• Recipients didn’t agree to receive those emails
• The sender was sending multiple irrelevant emails to the recipients
• There was no unsubscribe option within the emails forcing recipients to mark the messages as spam
• Senders sent emails to harvested accounts ‘bought’ through third parties – without consent.

How to Find If Your Domain Is Blacklisted by ISPs?

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use Mail Abuse Prevention Systems to monitor and clean spam email messages passed to their users. These services create a list when they find that an IP address or domain name is sending spam emails actively.

The blacklists are of different types. Some blacklists will let your message pass through to the recipient but it will drop in the junk folder. However other blacklists will block the email from reaching the recipient.

A trustful list of Blacklist used by ISPs includes:

• bl.spamcop.net
• cbl.abuseat.org
• pbl.spamhaus.org
• sbl.spamhaus.org

Blacklists impacts the delivery of email depending on its message. Your recipient mail server can discard your emails if you are blacklisted.

How to remove IPs and Domains from the blacklist

Getting “delisted” from a blacklist service is a time-intensive task.

• For starters, you will have to make sure that your IP/domain is following the standards set by the ISPs.
• Consult a technical expert for the blacklist reason. Mailrush.io offers Email Marketing Consultation and you can get in touch with them.
• In addition, properly configure your mail servers to avoid any sort of technical issues (PTR, DKIM, SPF, etc.).
• Stop using dumb SMTP servers for your campaigns. Use an Intelligent Email Marketing Tool.

Blacklist Removal Processes

Blacklists often remove the domains from their lists if the blacklisted domains stop sending spam emails. While this is a usual practice and bots monitor each domain or IP closely. However, when you have fixed things from your end, you can also notify the email servers to remove you from blacklists.

Spamhaus Removal Process

Self Service Removal process allows the users to remove their domains from the blacklists without hassle.

To start, go to the Spamhaus database and then search for your domain name. If your server is only accessible through an IP address, you can search that as well. If you get a blacklist reported, you can use the self-service removal option to remove the IP.

Then, If your domain is an extreme offender, chances are that the servers will keep it quarantined for longer periods. This happens with servers that are hacked and used by cyber criminals for illicit purposes. ISPs closely monitor these servers and keep them quarantined until they are safe for use.

Spam and Email Blacklist check

Most people buy used domains online thinking that they can rank them higher and make profitable sites through them. But when they start using this domains for email marketing, they realize that these sites were already penalized by email ISPs.

Therefore, to avoid such a disappointing trap, always get all domains checked through domain blacklisting tools. We have already provided a list of IP blacklisting tools that you can use to detect if a domain name is good to go.

Screenshot of Spamhaus domain blacklist checking tool

Because in most cases, the domain is perfectly fine but the server is the issue. You can check your blacklist status at MXToolbox by clicking on the ‘Blacklist Check’.

Here is the result:

Certainly all the results have said a positive ‘OK’. This means that the server is perfectly fine to host this domain. Not all blacklist are widely used or trustful.

Blacklist organizations are open for discussion in the event of getting listed by mistake. The more open and direct you are with the listing database, the easier it will be to get your server off the blacklist.

Wrapping up

In conclusion, Spam Blacklist are reference for Email Service Providers and marketers needs to constantly verify their status and reputation. Point to note:

1. Companies want to reduce spam from reaching others through emails that is why they blacklist offenders. This is the only way to keep the recipients safe and to control the flow of information.
2. Spam can lead to further problems for recipients. If the domain owners are not too careful they can unintentionally cause data and financial loss to someone.
3. Blacklisting databases prevent fraud.
4. Protect users from malwares.
5. Blacklisting databases are fairly strict in penalizing domains and IP addresses. So, make sure that you are careful while dealing with external parties such as sending emails, or providing material for download.

It is the priority of everyone to resolve blacklist issues as soon as possible. If you are having difficulty with it, consider contacting MailRush.io for a consultation about your issue.