Aug 31, 201810:07 AM - last edited on Aug 18, 20208:56 AM by jennysowyrda
Contributor
Sendability issues... Hubspot send IP is blocklisted
SOLVE
We recently sent out an important email to known contacts (who regularly receive direct emails from us) from a known sender on our team, "Ken." Despite these contacts always responding to direct emails from "Ken," the marketing email from "Ken" to about 250 confirmed contacts resulted in only a 20% open rate (a minimalist email with only 2 links and 2 images). A random sample of 10 recipients found that 9 did not receive the email -- and the email was also not found in their junk or spam folder.
Our connected domain's DNS is properly set up according to HS directions, and our IT team has confirmed this several times.
Sending a test email to MXtoolbox resulted in a failure of proper TXT and DKIM settings, however, SendForensics scored deliverability above 70%.
We've been noticing a slow decline of open rates over the past year, but this is getting really serious: A significant percentage of 250+ people who regularly respond to emails from us, appear to be not getting a marketing email sent from Hubspot.
What steps should we consider to fix this? And please, DO NOT RESPOND with something like, "have their IT department allow list" or something like that... because THEY ARE getting individual emails sent by "Ken" and the rest of our team.
Sendability issues... Hubspot send IP is blocklisted
SOLVE
SORBS is a blocklist, which is a little different than a blacklist. They aim to put all marketing email shared IP's on their blocklist. HubSpot sends marketing email through shared IP's so they are accomplishing their aim by putting us on their blocklist.
Fortunately, SORBS listings cause virtually zero bounces (quarantines, spam folder placement, etc...). For example the SORBS bounce rate last month was 0.0011% of sends on affected IPs in August. This is low because the recipients that use SORBS service to filter spam are also agreeing to block third-party-sent marketing email, which many IT security professionals deem to be too aggressive.
They are rare, but if you are actually seeing bounces that reference SORBS, in general my advice would be to respect the security systems that the recipient put in place to protect their inbox. However, in the case that the recipient themselves expresses to your organization that they want your email, then you should--and I'm sorry for saying this--have them whitelist your portal's marketing IP's. They would need to make an exception for our marketing email as it is against their general email policy.
