Email Blacklisting

In my other life as a deep techie, one of the things my company does is run an ASP Email Marketing service called Enabler (www.enablermail.com).

Enabler, sends out single and bulk emails on behalf of our clients (well they do the sends, but through our servers).

Now, as you can imagine making sure that our client's are not spamming is part of the service. And is something that increasingly difficult to deal with. We put in place all of the controls that we can. Everything from strict Terms and Conditions in our contracts, through to helping them with best practice advice and consultancy services, and we do a pretty good job.

However, this doesn't stop our servers from getting blacklisted in the RBL (Real-Time Black List) lists and from ISP's like AOL.

What has happened is that in some senses too much power is in the hands of end consumers, and this effects our legitimate business activity.

Anyone can add you to a blacklist, just by saying you have been sending Spam (with a suitable mockup email). And that's it you're blacklisted!

More on this touchy topic later.