How to Check whether You’re on an E-Mail Blacklist
3 of 8 in Series: The Essentials of Spam and Blacklists as Applied to E-Mail Marketing
If you’re marketing your products or services via e-mail, you need to know when your IP is being blacklisted. If your message isn’t being delivered customers can’t flock to buy your products, and your bottom line suffers. Bounce-back e-mails are often the first indication that your e-mails are being blocked, and if the message tells you why your e-mail didn’t get delivered, you have your first tool for getting your IP off the blacklist.
Part of your e-mail marketing strategy relies on systems to optimize your message deliverability rate and to monitor non-deliveries and the reasons for them. As well as pursuing solutions to nondeliveries internally, you can build in a routine of checking to see whether your IP is listed on some of the largest blacklists. You simply input your IP address at one or more anti-spam websites:
CBL (Composite Blocking List)
NJABL.org (Not Just Another Bogus List)
SORBS (Spam and Open Relay Blocking System)
If you find your IP listed, search the site for instructions on how to get off the list.
You can also sign up for commercial auditing services with a number of companies who charge a fee to monitor your domains and alert you to any problems; some will even help you get off a blacklist and offer a variety of e-mail marketing tools. Many of these companies offer free trials:
Web Design & Development Glossary
