Prospect Genius

Maintaining a good sender reputation is crucial for ensuring your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes. However, mistakes happen, and sometimes, you may find your domain and IP reputation damaged, leading to your emails being marked as spam, especially by providers like Gmail. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to repair your email reputation effectively.

Understanding the Situation

When your IP and domain reputation suffer, it can feel tempting to switch to a new IP or domain. However, this can often do more harm than good, as switching can appear suspicious to email providers and lead to further issues, a practice known as “snowshoe spamming.” Instead, it’s crucial to focus on rebuilding your reputation with a strategic and gradual approach.

Common Pitfalls Leading to Bad Reputation

Even if you’re not a spammer, you might end up with a bad sender reputation due to innocent mistakes:

1. Uploading the Wrong List of Data
   • Accidentally sending emails to the wrong list can result in high bounce rates and spam complaints.
2. Data Manipulation Errors
   • Correcting typos in your CRM can sometimes invalidate email addresses, leading to massive bounces.
3. Overzealous New Employees
   • New team members might scrape the internet for email addresses or buy inappropriate data, adding it to your lists and causing reputation damage before you realize it.

Step-by-Step Guide to Rebuild Your Reputation

1. 1. Stop All Email Sending
      • The first and most crucial step is to stop all email sending immediately. This allows the negative reputation cycle to reset. You need to wait for a full 30 days without sending any emails. This period helps clear the negative marks from your reputation score.
   2. Prepare for the Warm-Up Process
      • Once the 30-day period is over, you can begin the warm-up process. This involves gradually increasing your email sending volume to rebuild your reputation. Here’s a recommended warm-up schedule:
        • Day 1: Send 50 emails
        • Day 2: Send 100 emails
        • Day 3: Send 100 emails
        • Day 4: Send 500 emails
        • Day 5: Send 1,000 emails
        • Day 6: Send 2,000 emails
        • Day 7: Send 5,000 emails
        • Day 8: Send 8,000 emails
        • Day 9: Send 12,000 emails
        • Day 10: Send 16,000 emails
   3. Focus on Engagement
      • Engagement is a critical factor in rebuilding your reputation. Aim to send emails that encourage positive actions such as:
        • Replies: Ask questions or include call-to-actions that prompt a response.
        • Clicks on Links: Include engaging and relevant links that subscribers will want to click on.
        • Marking as Important: Encourage subscribers to mark your emails as important or star them in their inbox.
      • Craft your email content to be highly engaging and valuable to your subscribers to increase these positive interactions.
   4. Segment Your Email List
      • To avoid overwhelming your subscribers and causing high unsubscribe rates, segment your email list. Each segment should receive emails according to the warm-up schedule without individuals receiving too many emails too frequently. For example, if you were sending weekly newsletters, continue to do so, but rotate different segments of your list to match the warm-up volume.
   5. Monitor Your Progress
      • Use tools like Gmail Postmaster Tools to monitor your email performance and reputation. Keep an eye on metrics such as spam complaints, bounce rates, and engagement rates. Adjust your strategy as needed based on these insights.
   6. Maintain Consistency
      • Consistency is key. Stick to your warm-up schedule and gradually increase your email volume while maintaining high engagement rates. Avoid sudden spikes in email volume, which can trigger spam filters.

Recommended Tools for Rebuilding Reputation

1. • Google’s Sender Guidelines (support.google.com/)
     • While this isn’t a “tool” per se, it’s important to understand the content of this post. If you send 5,000 messages in a single day, you’ll be labeled a “bulk sender” and have additional rules to follow. Read and understand this post before you tackle your reputation repair project (or sooner, ideally.)
   • Google Postmaster Tools (postmaster.google.com)
     • This is essential for getting an accurate view of your reputation with Gmail. Relying solely on the reputation score provided by your email service provider can be misleading. For example, SendGrid might show a high score while Google’s Postmaster Tools indicate a low reputation.
   • Deliverability Testing Tools (Mail-tester)
     • These tools help ensure your email content avoids words and phrases that can trigger spam filters. While we have no affiliation with any specific tool, using them can significantly improve your deliverability.
   • Email Validation Tools
     • Validating your email lists is crucial to (among other things) avoid sending to honeypot traps. Email honeypots are dormant email addresses set up to catch spammers. Sending to these addresses can severely damage your reputation. There are many providers available, so shop around for the best pricing and service.

Adjusting the Warm-Up Period for Weekly Newsletters

If you send weekly newsletters, adjust the warm-up period accordingly. You don’t want to suddenly start sending daily emails to subscribers expecting weekly or monthly updates. Optimize for the daily send volume while ensuring each address only receives one email per week. This can be done with proper list segmentation and rotation. For a detailed example of how you might do this, check out this blog post.

Conclusion

Repairing your email reputation is a manageable process that requires patience and a strategic approach. By stopping all sends for 30 days, gradually increasing your volume, focusing on engagement, and closely monitoring your progress, you can effectively rebuild your reputation and ensure your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes. Remember, consistency and high-quality content are your best allies in this journey.

Did you know that your competitors can buy PPC ads on YOUR name? That’s right, they can pay for ads to run on searches for YOUR name and then appear ahead of you on the page because of it!

In many cases, you can stop this from happening. Google provides a way for you to report infringing ads and even to prevent them in the future. This article outlines some of the details.

If you have a unique name, getting trademark protection will be easier than if you have something generic. For example, “John Smith’s Plumbing Services” will be much more likely to attain these protections than “Professional Plumbing Service of Houston” because the former uses a unique name while the latter uses a bunch of keywords strung together.

If you’re using an outsourced marketing company to run your Google Ads, this process is something they should be on top of and may have already completed for you. It’s worth reaching out to find out. In the event that they have no idea what you’re talking about, this might be a bright red flag that your vendor isn’t as high-quality as you might have previously thought. That realization might lead you to question what other industry-standard information they are not aware of.

If you find yourself in the position of needing to make a change, we’re always here to help. Feel free to reach out to us for advice or to get going with a campaign. We even give you the option to sign up for a Google Ads campaign online, at your own convenience.

Many new businesses sign up for pay-per-lead service because it seems like a foolproof way to get business on a shoestring budget. What they all find out though, is that the shoestrings had better be ropes because the costs for these services can be severe.

The Math Error

Many people make a simple math error on these programs. They think that a $20 lead means that they’ll clear $80 on a $100 job. The problem here is that they’ve left out the fact that those leads are typically shared with other competitors. That means that 3-6 other companies are also fighting for that business. Assuming you’re one of 5, that means you should, on average, land 1 out of every 5 leads. That means you spend $100 on leads before doing that $100 job. All of your revenue was just consumed by the marketing efforts and you haven’t even accounted for your other costs like fuel, tolls, parts, or wear-and-tear.

The Post-Merger Double-Pay

Now that HomeAdvisor and Angi have merged, we’re seeing yet another problem. People enrolled with both services are finding that they’re paying each of them for the same exact lead. So now you’re not just paying for 5 leads to close a job, you’re paying one of them for a shot at 5 leads, but also paying a second time for some of those same 5 from the other company. That means you’re financially better off just sleeping in that day.

The Fix

There’s a way out, and it’s not even that hard.

1. Recognize that the root problem is the pay-per-lead model. Your marketing vendor is financially incentivized to send you as many leads as they can force you to pay for. Your goal is to pay for only the minimum number of leads you need. Your goals are actually counter to one another. It’s actually in their best interests to tire you out so you give up and just pay for the bogus leads rather than fight about every single one. That’s a huge red flag for any vendor.
2. Drop one or both of these vendors. Since there’s so much overlap between these two companies, you will not get $200 of value by spending $100 with each one. Each dollar spent with the second company brings a diminishing return which just wastes your resources. Even if you manage to dispute the duplicate leads, you’re still wasting time on the endeavor.
3. Reinvest those savings into yourself. Get your own web presence properly set up so you need to pay for leads at all. When done right, you should be able to generate inbound calls without paying the extortionate rates that pay-per-lead companies charge.
4. Just because you built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come. Your site will need some time to gain traction, so use that time to add content to it in the form of blog posts and detailed pages describing each service you offer. Not a writer? Not a problem. We write pages for people every single day and would be happy to help you. You can check that service out here, and even sign up online if you want.
5. Pick the low-hanging fruit first. That site needs backlinks in order to rank. You can jump-start this process on easy-mode with services like our Directory Dominator. Just plug in your info and wait while the backlinks pour out onto directory sites all over the web. You’ll see more and more of your calls come in from your own sources as your rankings improve. Just remember, nothing is instantaneous so give it a little time.

Now you can go count all your saved money while you laugh all the way to the bank.