Why was my email blocked?
The email server sending your messages appears to be listed on the Sender Score Blacklist. This may make it difficult for your messages to be delivered to some recipients.
The Sender Score Reputation Network calculates the likelihood that emails from any email server may be objectionable or otherwise unwanted based on measurement of past performance. The Sender Score Blacklist consists of the worst performing email servers based upon current data from the Sender Score Reputation Network.
To determine if your email server is currently listed on the Sender Score Blacklist and request a temporary removal, please enter your IP address in the link below.
https://www.senderscore.org/rtbl/
What is my email reputation?
To determine the reputation of your email server, look up your Sender Score by entering your IP or domain in the box below.
https://www.senderscore.org/
If your score is low, one or more of these factors is negatively affecting your overall reputation and causing your mail to be rejected or filtered:
- Complaint Rate. You have an unusually high complaint rate. Complaint rates about email from your blocked IP far exceed most senders. Complaint rate is calculated as number of spam complaints/volume of email delivered.
- Unsubscribe Issues. Unsubscribe mechanisms from your email are being illegally harvested. Sender Score has followed unsubscribe links from the body of your emails to validate they are honored. During our tests, we determined that unsubscribe requests in your emails generated new, additional email.
- Excessive Blacklisting. Your sending IP or Domain is negatively listed on a number of public blacklists. Appearance on several, uncorrelated blacklists indicates poor sending behavior and negatively affects your reputation.
- Unknown Users. Your unknown user rate is unusually high. A large amount of email from your servers is being sent to unknown users (users that do not have an active mailbox at that location).
- Spam Trap Hits. You are sending email to email addresses that should not receive email.
How can I fix this and get my mail delivered?
When the performance measured by the Sender Score Reputation Network improves, the listing will automatically resolve. This usually occurs within 24 hours of improvement as measured by our data sources.
If you are concerned that your email is not being delivered and you are not the administrator of the system sending your email, please contact your ISP, email service vendor, or email system administrator and notify them of the issue.
Email Deliverability Best Practices
- Reduce complaints about your email.
- Manage the registration process to meet future expectations. Give subscribers a good idea of what they will be receiving.
- Make sure that all email addresses are confirmed with an opt-in process that ensures the recipient wants to receive your mail. Ideally, support an opt-in process that requires some affirmative confirmation before that e-mail address is added to the mailing list or "double opt-in".
- Keep message content relevant and expected. Mail at an expected frequency, use personalization and customization, and stay consistent.
- Analyze complaints. Change copy, rethink subscriber acquisition process, alter frequency and make other messaging program improvements in response to complaints.
- Don't send unsolicited email.
- Provide a method of unsubscribing from your list in each mail you send. Make sure you honor any unsubscribe requests in a timely fashion.
- Get removed from public blacklists. Public blacklists track suspected spam and virus sources.
Use dnsstuff (www.dnsstuff.com) to determine which blacklists you may be listed on.
- Ensure your mail servers are not open relays and that your servers attempt to detect and deny connections to open proxies. At a minimum, your SMTP servers should identify the originating IP addresses of the email and indicate this in the email headers to help you diagnose spam problems. There are a variety of open relay testers available.
- Remove bounced email addresses. Bounces indicate mail could not be delivered because the user does not exist, no longer exists or is unable to accept your email. List managers should remove addresses that generate bounces. A particularly popular technique for managing bounces is to use VERP to identify the recipient address that has failed.
- Only send to confirmed opt-in email addresses. If you are hitting spam traps, check the source of your email addresses and/or lists. Only email to addresses that have opted in.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Does getting removed from the Sender Score Blacklist or improving my Sender Score guarantee my email will get delivered?
Sender Score does not directly block or accept email. Receiving email networks and ISPs may query Sender Score and use the result as a means for assessing their email traffic and allowing or rejecting email. The lowest scores are often filtered or blocked by email receivers. However, only the receiving network can ultimately determine if your email is delivered. Improving your Sender Score generally improves the chances your email is delivered.
I still have questions, who can I contact?
In the event you have followed the above steps and still have questions or concerns about your email delivery, you may contact Sender Score reputation support at http://sendersupport.senderscore.net/form.php.
