Email marketing reputations are highly overrated and ending up on a blacklist is not really such a big deal. At least that’s what some email marketers like to think, whether or not it has any relevance to reality.
If you’re out to totally trash your email reputation and ensure that your campaigns are throttled by ending up on half the blacklists in the known universe, use these five extremely effective and time-proven methods:
- Not managing unsubscribes
They gave you permission and now they want to unsubscribe? Ignore them! They’re not really serious unless they hit unsubscribe three or four times anyway. Besides, you’ve got the records of their double opt-in, so if they don’t want to receive your emails any longer they can just darn well change their email addresses. - Sending too frequently
A monthly newsletter is good, a weekly one is better and, heck, why not send one every day, or even twice a day? Email campaigns which keep dinging those inboxes too frequently, or at a frequency greater than the one the customer agreed to when they subscribed, will lead to abuse reports and blacklists. Since you’re committed to destroy your email marketing reputation anyway, at least you’ll go out with a bang. - Buying (or renting) an email list
In order to send out emails in a fully legal and ethical manner, the subscriber must provide permission directly to you to be placed on a subscription list to receive a specific email newsletter campaign. When you are buying or renting a list that prerequisite becomes impossible, as the individuals granting permission to be placed on that list had no inkling that it was linked with you or your email campaign. The clattering barrage of abuse reports will make you think it’s the 4th of July. Fireworks in your inbox! John Philip Sousa forever! - Grabbing email addresses from websites
Just like most pirated movie and CD torrent files are riddled with viruses and traps, so are the lists of emails you can find by trawling the fetid depths of the web. When you scrape email addresses from various and sundry online locations, you’re virtually ensuring that you’ll also be grabbing spam-trap addresses which lead directly to anti-spam agencies and even the Feds. Ask the spammers who are currently in jail if CAN-SPAM has teeth. - Ignoring spam complaints
There’s no such thing as bad publicity, your Doberman is your complaints department, and all of those abuse reports are nothing more reverse spam. File them under F for Fuggedaboudit. After all, those big ISPs wouldn’t dare block you for receiving too many spam abuse reports: They know you have posters on your office wall of Al Pacino not just as Scarface but Michael Corleone as well.
Why even bother to attempt to maintain a sparkling clear email reputation which boosts your delivery rates and keeps both subscribers and ISPs happy? That’s just for wusses anyway!