Marketing teams are constantly focusing on how to connect with the right people at the right time, with the right content, through the right channel. This precision is crucial for marketers to engage their database, provide value, and build trust. But all that hard work goes to waste when an email is snagged by a spam filter. Internet service providers (ISPs) rely on the score of your internet protocol (IP) address to determine the trustworthiness of your email. A bad IP score will result in low email deliverability, stifling your email marketing efforts.

In this blog post I’ll review how to set up and maintain your IP address score, ensuring your emails get delivered.

It’s all about reputation

When you select a marketing automation (MA) platform, like Eloqua, Marketo, or Exacttarget Marketing Cloud, you can either operate on their internet protocol (IP) address range, or manage your own IP address. 

Most large enterprises and companies operating in highly regulated industries, tend to manage their own IP addresses. 

After your MA platform issues your IP addresses, and you make the necessary internal configuration steps (registering a sub-domain, making specific DNS changes, etc.), you must “warm” your IP address.

How do you warm your IP address? 

1. Get ~150K valid email addresses
   
   Why so high an amount? Because you need to demonstrate a level of volume in order to establish a reputation. Companies tend to select people they’ve communicated with recently and, therefore, are less likely to mark the email as spam. Do not purchase a list for this effort. If you find it difficult to build a list that large, than that’s a good argument for operating on the MA’s shared range. 
2. Create one simple email
   
   Companies tend to go with general announcements (new product, new service) over newsletters and event invitations. 
3. Start a campaign
   
   Design a campaign that sends the email (from step 2) over the course of four weeks to a gradually increasing number of email addresses. 
4. Check your score
   
   Monitoring the score of the IP Address on senderscore.org and deliverability reports available within your marketing automation platform.

ISPs are more likely to enable the delivery of emails originating from IP addresses with respectable scores (85 or above, out of 100).  

You should generate a score within the first week of your warming effort. Don’t be surprised if your score fluctuates throughout your effort, however, if you see a downward trend follow the steps detailed below.

Steady as she goes

Your work isn't done once once you've warmed your IP. Follow these maintenance procedures to keep a high score:

• Monitor your sender score weekly
  
  Keep tabs on your rating and look for significant swings.
• Review deliverability reports
  
  These are available within your MA platform.
• Create and execute an inactive Contacts policy
  
  For example, commit to removing people who haven’t interacted with you in over one year from your lists (and possibly removing them from your MA platform entirely). 
• Test your deliverability
  
  This is essential, especially when rolling out new designs. Test your emails using your MA platform’s tools, or other products like Litmus or ReturnPath.
• Respect your unsubscribes
  
  Make it easy for people to unsubscribe from you and focus on creating relevant content to attract those who want to talk with you.
• Whitelisting
  
  Ask your recipients to add your “From Email Address” to their safe senders list—also known as Whitelisting

One other recommendation is to monitor the performance of list purchases. ISPs and other organizations dedicated to fighting spam, create fake email addresses (traps), hoping that spammers will pick them up and use them. If your purchased or rented list contains one of these fake emails, then your reputation may take a hit.

What to do if things go South

Your IP address can become blacklisted if it is associated with high levels of spam, complaints, bouncebacks, and fake email addresses, 

Emails from a blacklisted IP will, most likely, never reach their intended recipients, and instead be caught by spam filters. 

If you suspect from your Senderscore and deliverability reports, that you might be blacklisted, confirm this by going to ReturnPath.com and completing a Blacklist Lookup using your IP address. If you find your address listed, you can work with Return Path to have it removed. 

There are other blacklists besides the one compiled by Return Path. After your investigation through ReturnPath.com, search for other blacklist compilers and methodically go about requesting your removal. 

Smooth sailing

With a little proactive maintenance, your IP address will maintain its sterling reputation and your deliverability rates will be reliable. Then you’ll be able to focus on getting the right information, to the right person, at the right time, via the right channel.

IP addresses and email deliverability are only one piece of the puzzle. See how you can craft an innovative Marketing strategy with Bluewolf’s free guide, The Three Pillars of Modern, Digital Marketing.