There is a common mistake that many business make when sending marketing or information-based emails: sending out email blasts from their corporate email account to groups in excess of 25 recipients and getting blacklisted. For example, if your corporate email is [email protected] and you send semi-large to large group emails, you may end up putting your entire email server on a blacklist. A blacklist is a list of spam offenders that email servers check prior to receiving emails. Many email servers block these blacklisted email addresses to help improve security by preventing phishing attacks while also improving usability for their users.
Unfortunately, they can also inadvertently block legitimate emails. If your corporate email address is on a blacklist, your email does not get received by the recipients’ email server which means your emails do not make it to your recipients’ inboxes. Once you get on a blacklist, you have to take steps to get yourself off the list which can be cumbersome and time consuming. Don’t wait to address this issue until after your email recipients tell you that they aren’t getting your emails as this adds further delay in determining whether or not you’re on a blacklist. This loss of time leads to business interruption and can make you look unprofessional to vendors and clients.
The right way to send group emails is through a service such as Constant Contact or iContact (though there are many more). With these services, you must first establish an account (that you pay for), then upload your email list and from there you can start writing/designing your content. Next, you can schedule a broadcast or send your emails right away. Lastly, many of the vendors for these email services have smart looking templates that you can modify to make your email stand out from the crowd.
The nice thing about these types of services is that you can also gather statistics on the number of emails delivered and how many emails are opened. You will also have an integrated ‘unsubscribe’ feature that will allow your subscribers to ‘opt-out’ of your emails which is something that you shouldn’t skimp on if you’re sending information-based or marketing emails. Best of all, your corporate emails don’t ever get blacklisted!
