Permission-based Email marketing is extremely effective, but the truth is that it can also be very hard work. Anybody who has tried to build an email list of any size and significance will know this. And so you can imagine a situation where, after all your hard work and investment to build a list of highly targeted recipients, you suddenly notice that only a small fraction of the emails you are sending out are actually reaching their targets.

Chances are that you will have been blocked by some internet service provider (ISP) which makes it virtually impossible for you to send any email message to certain addresses. At this point it hardly matters whether the recipient in question is one of your longest serving customers or not, as long as his ISP has blocked you, your emails will not reach him. This can have a huge negative impact on your business and so the first question we have to ask is how people who are not spammers end up being blocked by an ISP.

Actually there are two main causes of email deliverability problems that you need to worry about. These are spam traps and Spam Complaints. If your email ends up in a spam trap you will almost certainly get blocked.

But what is a spam trap? This is a special email address used by ISPs and other receivers to catch SPAMMERS. Usually the email address will be one that is not used or accessed by any human and so clearly there is no way you will have received any permission to send email messages to that particular address. And so this will be conclusive evidence that you are a spammer and the ISP will promptly block all your emails.

Sometimes ISPs will use email accounts that have been abandoned to identify spammers to block. This is where you will get caught if you do not look after your list on a regular basis and go for long periods without sending out any communication to your list.

Either way these spam traps serve the same purpose;  and the result will be that you will be completely blocked by that particular ISP from sending any emails in their direction. So if a large percentage of your opt-in email list uses that particular ISP, an equally large percentage of your emails will not be delivered.

The only way out would be for you to remove the offending email addresses. This is not very easy to do because ISPs will never reveal their spam traps.

The other cause of email deliverability problems are persistent spam complaints against you. While no ISP will block you just because of a single spam complaint, that they will take action if they feel that they are too many spam complaints against you. How many is too many? Each ISP has their own standards and criteria but mostly it will be one spam complaint for every 1,000 emails you send out. In most cases they will start off with a temporary punishment like blocking you for a short period, say 72 hours. However if the spam complaints are persistent then there is a chance that they will take the drastic step of blocking your ip address on a long-term basis.

One key thing you can do to minimize your chances of ever ending up in a spam trap is to avoid purchasing email lists. While not all email lists being sold out there are bad the truth is that many of them will usually have outdated email addresses thus dramatically increasing the chances of your email address ending up on somebody’s black list which will greatly harm your email marketing efforts. Build your own lists and make sure that they are all double opt-in.

The other precaution you can take is to ensure that the email lists you build are in constant use and that you do not stay for more than 3 months without communication with your subscribers. Actually, the more regular your emails, the lesser the chances of you ending up in trouble with ISPs. Regular would usually be weekly or every two weeks.

You should also remember that when you stay for long periods of time without sending emails to your lists and then you suddenly resume, chances are high that some of your subscribers will have forgotten about you and will be quick to file spam complaints.

Always remember that your sender reputation is key to the success of your email marketing campaigns and so it makes sense to take every possible precaution to maintain an impeccable reputation and to stay away from the deadly wrath of ISPs.

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