Have you ever experienced an internet service provider (ISP) block that you believed wasn't warranted? If so, have you considered putting yourself in the shoes of an ISP? The goal of any ISP is to protect their patrons - your email recipients. Every day countless senders try to send email through their systems - some wanted email, and some not.

So in order to keep their email clients happy, the ISP has to create complex filters to determine which email messages are of interest to their users, and which aren’t. And if a particular sender is questionable enough, a block may be put up to prevent further email from entering.

ISPs look at the reputation of each IP address/domain. An email sender with a good reputation has:  

• high open and clickthrough rates
• low spam and bounce rates
• numerous people adding them to the safe sender list, etc.

A not so good email sender has exactly the opposite. And it makes sense. A good sender with many people opening and clicking their email messages means there is true interest. The poor sender, on the other hand, doesn’t have people interested in their email content and have low open and clickthrough rates, therefore they will ultimately have a harder time getting into the inbox, and a greater risk of being blocked.

Remember, you are in the shoes of the service provider and your goal is to protect email clients. Would you want your clients to experience uncontrolled amounts of email coming through, or would you at times put a block up to filter out the questionable email? I think you know the answer.

So now let’s get back into our own marketing shoes. If you follow email marketing best practices - perform double opt-ins, implement relevant list segmentation, and cater to your email subscribers' preferences and interests - you reduce the risk of that dreaded block. It’s no easy task though. Being a good email marketer requires hard work, a willingness to let go of a bad mailing list, and a genuine interest in your recipients' experience. If you aren’t sure exactly what things to consider, take a look at these guides and whitepapers.

An ISP's priority is its email clients, and it just so happens that your priority as an email marketer should be the same group of people. Easily said, it’s just a matter of finding common ground with the group of people you are catering to - that's what will keep your email marketing from being blocked.

Also read:

• Examining Email Deliverability Blocks
• Email Bounces, Blocks & Blacklists: definitions, purpose & resolution
• Never-ending Spam Blocks 

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About the Author

Ghia Espino is an account manager at Lyris. She strategizes with clients to improve their online marketing performance and works as their Lyris advocate.

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