Internet service providers are constantly changing their standards to determine good versus bad senders, and policing what email can and can’t be delivered into the inbox, especially as company privacy policies are increasingly being challenged and scrutinized. Moreover, there is no standardization of email standards across ISPs - each one has its own secret sauce, and this recipe is hidden by lock and key.

As a result, it's difficult for email marketers to be certain about their sending practices.

Aside from the best practices - continuous email list hygiene (quality of subscribers over quantity of subscribers), use of HTML only (no cascading style sheets), omission of forms or streaming videos, caution with email subject lines, and sending only to email subscribers who have opted in - another way to gain some control of the delivery of your email marketing is by using a dedicated IP address. Here’s why:

• Protection of your sender reputation. If you’ve applied all of the best practices to your email marketing campaign, you wouldn’t want other senders affecting the delivery of your messages into the inbox.


• An additional source of identification. ISPs can use the dedicated IP address to verify who you are and the types of email messages you send as you build and maintain your sender reputation. You can also request whitelisting from the ISPs to help improve email deliverability rates.


• Easier diagnosis of email deliverability issues. Since only your messages are assigned to a specific dedicated IP, it becomes easier to pinpoint and test different components of your email message when you run into deliverability issues.

The realm of email deliverability can be difficult to interpret and filled with gray areas. Sending email campaigns on a dedicated IP is one way to shed some light onto your email marketing practices.

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