High bounce rates

If any email you send via acquires a hard bounce rate violating acceptable threshold, it is likely that further sending of email will be blocked.

Here are a few common reasons why an email might get recorded as a hard bounce:

• invalid email address
• a person has canceled their email address
• non-existent domain

High spam complaint rates

automatically watches all accounts sending patterns, including spam complaint rates. When we see a high spam complaint rate we may automatically block sending for the account to prevent any further emails from causing more spam complaints. It’s important to remember, people usually lodge complaints because they didn’t receive the content they originally opted-in for.

Spam complaints can be caused for many reasons, but here are a few of the more common reasons:

• non-opt in list
• email address owner did not give explicit permission for ongoing email communication
• opted in a long time ago
• have not received an email in some time
• people are disengaged and are generating low open and click rates, without regular list pruning occurring in the account
• you switched to from a different platform, and the newly found better deliverability is causing people to receive emails after an extended period of time without communication

A person reports spam because they aren’t getting what they want or had expected out of the email relationship.  They feel, regardless of the sender’s intent, that what they received was unwanted and they considered the email “spam.” In essence, spam is whatever the person perceives it to be so it’s important to go through each step of the opt-in process to make sure there’s no room for a misunderstanding when someone is registering for email marketing and information.

Explicit permission not obtained

If you will be using , we require that every person has given explicitpermission to receive what you will be sending to them. Not only that, but explicit permission is the first step and cornerstone to a long lasting email relationship. However, the number one reason why someone may unsubscribe, report spam or simply not engage with a sender’s marketing is because they didn’t give that expressed permission to receive emails.

Permission cannot be given by a third party. Permission can never be implied. Permission must always come directly from the individual person, and they must clearly express that permission for exactly what they will be receiving.

Here are a few common mistakes made when building a list, but not gathering explicit permission

• customers are not subscribed to marketing emails
• a list of tradeshow attendees
• addresses collected via a ‘Free Report’ lead capture model
• co-registration
• requiring an email address to get to the next page, view a video, etc.
• past customers or trial users

Sending email to purchased lists

Another common reason an account can get blocked or banned is if you are sending email content to purchased lists, or lists of people that have not directly opted in to receive email content from you. It is important to understand that should only be used for inbound email marketing. This means that the subscribers receiving your email content must opt-in to you in some manner. This may be through a form on your website, or by them getting added to your list by a third party integration connected to .

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We must manage and enforce our Terms of Service (ToS). We do this to ensure our shared brand and email reputation is always excellent. Sometimes that means banning the hardcore spammers, but sometimes that also means turning away good senders in a high-risk industry or niche. It’s one of the tougher things we do around here, but also one of the most critical to protecting our customers’ email deliverability.

If you are unsure whether your content might cause your account to get blocked or banned, contact our Support team.