When SendGrid email experts Carly Brantz and Paul Kincaid-Smith hosted a webinar offering tips on how to improve sender reputation the conversation was so great that they didn’t have a chance to get to everything. Afterwards they took the time to answer some of those questions here.

1. 7 Tips to Improve your Sender
Reputation
Webcast Q&A with Carly and Paul

2. When SendGrid email experts Carly Brantz and
Paul Kincaid-Smith hosted a webinar offering tips
on how to improve sender reputation the
conversation was so great that they didn’t have a
chance to get to everything. Afterwards they took
the time to answer some of those questions here.
If you missed the webinar you can access a
recording here.

3. Q: How do outlook users complain that a message is spam?
A: They complain through the junk email reporting tool plugin that
works to improve the Microsoft Outlook spam filter. They also use a
third party Outlook plugin like Cloudmark to report spam.

4. Q: What is an ESP?
A: An ESP is an email service provider. They are organizations that
provide email servers to send, receive and store email for organizations
and/or end users. They can also be a company which offers email
marketing or bulk email services.

5. Q: I am having a very bad problem with my emails. I have a
membership site and my sign-up confirmation emails are being
blocked because my IP is one several blacklists. If I get a
dedicated IP will this solve the problem?
A: Yes, your transactional emails (like sign-up confirmations) are
more likely to be delivered if you send them from a dedicated IP. If you
also plan to send marketing emails (which are more likely to be
reported as spam), we suggest you send those from a sub-account with
a separate dedicated IP address.

6. Q: RE: Hard bounces… what would be the best practice to resolve
permanent errors that are the result of anti-spam filters rejecting
emails to a certain address? Should I remove the address entirely,
or try again later after identifying the problem?
A: If a spam filter issues 5xx permanent errors, you may wish to
move that recipient’s address from your list and add it to a separate list
to try again (cautiously, in small amounts) at a later date once your
sending reputation improves.

7. Q: SPF can be tricky to get right, especially with other senders.
Your thoughts on using and sending SPF?
A: I’d say it is considered best practice to implement SPF along
with SenderID and DKIM, especially if you are a high volume sender. In
the absence of authentication of all your emails, it is very difficult for an
ISP to confirm that you are in fact a legitimate sender. Learn how to
authenticate your email in 5 easy steps here.

8. Q: Is there a big/market leading spam filter that all the email
servers work with, like Google is for search for instance?
A: There is no one single spam filter used by all receiving mail
servers. Many solutions incorporate a multi-layered approach with filter
technology from multiple sources. Filter popularity varies by geographic
region and by receiver type. Small businesses will use a different type
of protection then a large ISP, for example. In North America, many
ISPs use Cloudmark Authority as part of their multi-layered inbound
filtering solution. Other popular filters include SpamAssassin, Ironport,
along with many others. Most large receivers also use RBLs (realtime
block lists) like Spamhaus’s SBL as a first line of defense. Many large
webmail providers also layer on their own homegrown filtering logic.

9. Q: Should I permanently remove “quote exceeded” email
addresses from legitimate recipients?
A: I think a good rule of thumb is to remove an email address that
has soft bounced three times without any trackable activity.

10. Q: I have a CRM web app that has many users with very limited
email capability through SendGrid. I am thinking of having a
“mass email” function to allow my users to send emails to their
contacts list. How can I avoid one user ruining it for everyone
else. Emails will be “from” each user’s email address- does that
help?
A: Currently, many receivers will block by IP, so if one of your users
sends a large spam run, other users sharing that IP are at risk of being
blocked. You could minimize the risk of this collateral damage several
ways:
1) Check all outbound mail with a spam filter, like SpamAssassin
before you submit to SendGrid.
2) Split your users across multiple IPs (your SendGrid account can
utilize multiple dedicated IPs). New, untrusted users could be
assigned to a different IP .
3) If each of your users is a distinct SendGrid sub-account, you can
track their complaints, open rates, etc. to identify the
troublemakers. SendGrid’s event API will help you monitor the
health of these sub-accounts in real time. Bottom line, you need to
have to the people, policies (terms of service), processes and tools
in place to prevent and identify bad behavior.

11. Q: How does DMARC fit into this, or into SendGrid’s solution?
A: Great question! We have an entire blog post addressing this
issue here.

12. Q: Are blacklists shared/centralized among MTA’s, or are they
always separate ones maintained by each MTA?
A: Many big receivers subscribe to shared third party blacklists (like
Spamhaus, SBL, or SURBL), and some also maintain their own local
blacklist.

13. Q: How do domains affect spam, it seems like a lot of spam now
(e.g. SEO) is sent from Gmail versus a corporate domain.
A: You’re right, spammers try to bypass spam filters by using
domains that have a good sending reputation. As you point out, some
spammers try to piggy-back on Gmail’s sending reputation. They can
be caught if they forge the from address to be someone@gmail.com.
(Some receivers check Gmail.com’s SPF record to detect that the
forged mail is not coming from an authorized Gmail.com IP address.
Gmail’s outbound spam detection team works hard to identify and lock
real Gmail accounts that send spam.)

14. Q: Would you use SendGrid to replace a sending MTA and/or
regular double opt-in corporate newsletters?
A: Both. SendGrid helps you focus on your business without the
cost and complexity of owning and maintaining email infrastructure. Our
technology, advanced analytics, and flexible APIs are designed to all
types of email- from transactional messages generated by an
application to double opt-in marketing campaigns.

15. Q: Does it harm my reputation of I change the “From” name when
using the same email address (even if it is beneficial to my
customers)?
A: Email addresses can be divided into two parts, the “Friendly
From” and the routable part. For example, “Franklin Fasteners”
<franklin@fasteners.com >. We don’t think you’ll incur a reputation hit if
you change the “friendly from” part (e.g. “Franklin Fasteners”) but you
are more likely to incur a reputation hit if you change the routable party.
Not all systems use the “from” address for reputation, but some do.
They are more likely to associate your sending reputation to your IP or
you DKIM signature (inserted into your message headers) or a
combination of both.

16. Q: Can I send through the same email from a different domain
name on a daily basis?
A: You can send the same message content from a different
domain on a daily basis, but many spam filters will recognize similar
content from different domains, so if one domain gets a bad reputation,
messages with the same format or content will probably be blocked too.

17. Q: We have been on board with SG for a few weeks and we are constantly
improving our practices, but for some reason our reputation has not
improved.
A: Your sender reputation if affected by the number of spam complaints. If
you got off to a bad start and sent to a lot of recipients who didn’t want your
message, some of them may have marked the message as spam. Sometimes
people will mark messages as spam days or weeks (even months!) after
receiving the message. If a steady (but hopefully declining) stream of spam
complaints trickles in, then that will degrade your sending reputation. The
reputation is bound to improve after the complaints abate. Also ensure your
bounce rates are low. Have you checked to see if your sending IP or domain is
in a blacklist? (Try multirbl.valli.org with both.) If you are blacklisted, sometimes
you’ll be able to discover the reason and reach out to get yourself delisted once
you’ve made the necessary changes to your sending practices.

18. Q: My list is past customers and people that signed up for email
specials and promotions. Some of the names are 10 years old.
How does SendGrid help in cleaning that up? What do I do, and
what does SendGrid do?
A: SendGrid delivers the mail you send. You are responsible for
your own list hygiene. That being said, a win-back campaign could be a
great way to clean up your list and outline exactly what they would
receive. This is a great way to take advantage of the names you
already have but ensure that are active and interested.

19. Carly Brantz
carly.brantz@sendgrid.com
@carlybrantz
Paul Kincaid-Smith
paul@sendgrid.com
@cyclingup