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One final word on blacklisting. Schools and districts are frequently tied into email reporting agencies such as (Spam Assassin, Cloudmark, Symantec Messaging Gateway.) These groups work with all the major email providers such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and others. IP addresses and domains that are reported as bad actors frequently get blacklisted. This means that messages that originate on these listed IP addresses and domains never even make it to the schools or district. They are simply blocked to all subscribers. We are aware of ways to get off of these blacklists, but they typically involve legal help and the spending of considerable sums of money not to mention a long-time. For most marketers in the industry a blacklisting means starting completely over. Abandoning previously used IP addresses and domains and start fresh with all new IP addresses and new domains.
But new industry standards have slowed marketers’ ability to get replacement IPs and domains into a useful production state. The industry’s goal is to make it harder for bad actors to just dump and jump (dump old IPs and Domains flagged as problematic and quickly be back in action with new IPs and Domains). So, the industry now requires new domains and IP be warmed up over a significant time period. Gradually increasing volume and building up a reputation over many weeks (sometimes months). So, the point of all this is to stress to marketers it is far better to stay out of trouble to start with. Fixing problems by promotional senders that choose to ignore the process and just do it the way they want is costly. MCH Strategic Data turns down some jobs because the risks to our sending reputation, sending IP addresses and sending domains are simply too great. So, it is far better to just approach the new email world reality using the proper process.
A Word About Blacklisting
Conclusion - Final Thoughts
We hope this information was useful and that you will help our valuable and important industry by approaching your email promotional campaigns correctly. Correctly creating, sending and profiting from promotional emails in the educational space requires investment of time and effort. This marketing channel is challenging but still very effective. Repetition and communication of useful information that builds up a positive reputation score will lead to profitable use of this channel. But few people can just wake up one day and run a marathon. Training, setting goals, measuring progress and success and sticking with it are a must. Just because email marketing was easy and could be exploited successfully with almost no work 5 years ago does not mean it is ineffective or a dead channel today because you need to work at it a bit to do things the right way. The more companies that “do things right” the better and longer this marketing channel can benefit all of us. The more that key players choose to ignore the needs of the schools and districts the stronger the filtering and blocking will become. MCH Strategic Data has hundreds of successful educational email marketing customers. We would be happy to help your organization find a positive ROI using this channel. We are also happy to answer your questions. Feel free to call us at 800-776-6373, email us at info@mchdata.com, or complete the contact form using the button below.
Thanks for helping our industry do this process right.