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Security Backlash: How to Repair Your Business' Email Reputation


What to do when your email newsletter unjustly lands on a blacklist

By Cindy Waxer

All it takes is one complaint from an overzealous anti-spam vigilante for your company's email newsletter to mistakenly wind up on a blacklist. An email blacklist essentially blocks all messages from a particular server, which could prove very costly to a company's bottom line. After all, today's major ISPs subscribe to blacklist databases in an effort to filter out spam that is sent across their networks or to their customers. In fact, AOL LLC blocks a reported 80 percent of messages sent to its subscribers via blacklisting technology.

But if your company's legitimate email newsletter is flagged as spam, it could create a devastating loss in advertising dollars and a considerable slump in sales. What's more, an ISP that suspects a company of spamming may just terminate its service altogether. Blocked legitimate email, or false positives, will cost U.S. businesses roughly $3.5 billion in 2008, according to a study from San Francisco-based Ferris Research.

The good news is that there are ways to restore your company's email reputation if it has been unjustly pegged as a spammer. Here are expert-recommended methods for making amends with the blacklist authorities that have unfairly targeted your company.

Take the Easy Way Out

In some instances, getting removed from a blacklist is as easy as submitting a Web-based form explaining why your company should be removed. So before you overreact to all of those emails that are bouncing back, keep an eye out for an easy resolution. Unfortunately, there are times when getting back into an ISP's good graces will take some heavy lifting. Just ask Ted Roberts, director of deliverability and ISP relationships at Silverpop, a provider of permission-based email-marketing solutions, strategies and services. According to Roberts, some blacklist owners "simply don't care if you're legitimate or not. They want to know what actions you have put in place to stop the behavior that caused the listing in the first place." However, no matter how much of the burden of proof is placed on your company, find out the blacklisting service's own procedures for adding and removing IP addresses and act accordingly.

Start a Conversation

You may want to scream at the blacklist owner who is responsible for inundating your inbox with undeliverable messages, but that's no way to rectify the situation. Instead, said Roberts, "If you can get into a conversation with the maintainer of a blacklist, it's always a good thing."

Get to the Root of the Problem

There are countless ways that an email newsletter might be miscategorized as spam. That's why "the most important thing is for companies to diagnose what problem landed them on that blacklist in the first place," advised Ray Everett-Church, director of policy and advisory services at Habeas Inc., a company that specializes in online-reputation-management services. Inheriting old IP addresses from known spammers, including links to other sites, switching email-service providers, refreshing a database and contacting customers after a long absence are all perfectly innocent activities that can launch an IP address to the top of a blacklist.

Determine the Criteria

Find out a blacklist service's specific criteria for separating spammers from legitimate senders. Each blacklist has its own definition of a spammer; thus, it is sometimes just as easy for small businesses that send email newsletters from a residential connection to land on a blacklist as it is for sites with high ISP complaint rates.

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