Getting your IP into a blacklist is a very uncommon scenario. There are multiple factors that can get your IP in a blacklist database. If you’re stuck with a blacklisted IP, this article will help you fix it.
You can get out of an IP blacklist, but you can’t completely understand why you ended up there. And this is done on purpose.
If spammers know how to evade a blacklist, the spam filter might as well have no existed.
So now, before you proceed, check if you’re really fallen into a blacklist.
We developed a tool to help you check your IP blacklist status with over 100 different services. Here’s a link to the email blacklist checker.
Look through the results to see if your IP or domain is listed in the blacklist report. If your IP is clean, congrats! There’s nothing to worry about.
You can instead read more on how to improve email delivery.
But if you are in a blacklist, let’s take the next few steps to get you out of that database.
Why Does an IP get Blacklisted?
One of the common blacklist databases that we’ve seen is Spamhaus. They maintain IP and domain blacklist databases that are shared with multiple mailbox providers.
There are a lot of other services out there and most have similar filtering criteria along with a few additional filters.
Here are some of the most common reasons why an IP can end up being in a blacklist database.
- Distributed similar emails via multiple IP addresses (also known as Snowshoe spamming)
- Used a spam email hosting service that allows any type of content on their servers
- An infected file was accidentally attached to an email that was sent out
- Your sending server or domain is known to be compromised before
- Sending emails to a purchased list or an unsolicited set of emails
- Practiced email sending that is listed as a spam operation in any of the blacklist database’s filters
- Sending an email blast to email lists that are scraped from the web
This list is in no way exhaustive and there are always newer methods of spam filtering that come up as we progress to understand spam better. But it’s a starting point.
What Can You Do To Get Out Of The IP Blacklist?
If your IP comes up in any of the blacklists after using the tool, you need to first notify your bulk email service provider. The easiest option for them would be to renew the IP for the server in-use for sending your emails.
But if you’re on a dedicated IP or a self-hosted email server, you need to take charge and follow the steps below.
1. Contact the IP Blacklist Provider
This is an important step. You must get in touch with the blacklist provider and make an appeal to get your IP removed from the blacklist. Depending on the reasons why your IP was blacklisted, they may or may not approve your request.
If your appeal is accepted, and your IP removed from the list, you can immediately start sending emails with some precautions to ensure higher-quality sending.
Either way, this is a necessary step as it can save a lot of trouble getting the IP removed manually.
2. Clean Up Your Email Lists
A common advice but an easily missed out one. Most of us would stall cleanup tasks because of the nature of the task. It’s boring.
But when your you’re in an IP blacklist, an email list cleanup is the most important step that is under your control. Compared to step #1, you don’t have to wait for someone to help you out here.
How to start with cleaning up your email list?
Begin by ensuring you separate email addresses that have not been engaging with your last 5-6 email campaigns, and those that have. You should have a very small list of people who actually open your emails.
What should you do with unengaged email contacts?
Don’t send any emails to them for a while. We need your IP reputation to get back to normal.
What emails can you send to improve your IP reputation?
The list of contacts who have engaged with you are more accepting of your emails and the spam filters have noticed that. So, begin sending really high quality emails to these lists of people.
3. Send Brilliant Content
We now want this engaged list of users to devour your emails when they arrive. Don’t sell anything. Just send super-valuable content that will make your reader’s day a lot better.
As you start sending more of such emails, your IP reputation starts improving.
What makes up for good content in an email?
A good email has these few things:
- A great subject line
- Relevant email content
- Avoid spam content
- Click-worthy links or offers
- Relevant images and attachments
You can read more about sending good emails here.
4. Maintain Good Consistency and Sending Practices
Take your time to connect with your audience once again. Your emails may not be received well in the beginning, but there’s nothing to worry. Consistency over a period of time will help you gain the lost reputation once again.
We have a lot of articles on how you can start out with maintaining consistency and gaining some traction when you want to start from scratch.
Here’s an article on some of the techniques for warming up before sending emails.
What’s next?
These are some of the general ideas you can take into account. Since any IP that goes into the IP blacklist for a specific reason, you have to take a deep dive into the reasons why you were blacklisted.
This can be done by understanding the filters of some of these blacklist providers and figuring out which one of you could have triggered, or by connecting with their blacklist centers.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on what the damage is. If your IP reputation was damaged due to spam reports, sending good emails can help but will take longer. Alternatively, if you’ve been blacklisted for using a spam host, you can switch the hosting and expect to see improvement much sooner.
If you want someone to help you get out of the blacklist, that’s possible. But paying the blacklist provider to remove you may not be possible.
If you have just started figuring out emails, it would be difficult to understand what went wrong. And just improving the email quality may not get you out of the blacklist, but it sure will help the overall reputation.
Yes, that’s a possible option. And we’d suggest taking this up as the first step while simultaneously improving your email quality. Because no matter what, an IP is blacklisted in the email spam filters because it triggered the spam filtering algorithms.
Conclusion
That’s about it for now. If you’re interested in learning more about the different ways to improve emeial deliverability, make sure you read through our tutorials.
And if you have any questions, you can always consult with our email delivery experts on the bottom right of the screen here. We’re always happy to help!
