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.