Automated List Suppression and Why You Must Implement It

One of the quickest ways to find your email sends ending up in spam folders, your IP and domains blacklisted and your email marketing business shuttered, is by ignoring email suppression.  Plainly put, email suppression is a must do.  And if you’re avoiding the tedious task of manually suppressing subscribers who do not want your messages (and malicious addresses too), don’t worry.  There’s an easier way.  It’s called automated list suppression, or automated email suppression.

What is email suppression and what addresses should be suppressed?

Suppression is exactly like it sounds.  Removing or sequestering email addresses from your list.

Now, unless you are regularly undergoing email list hygiene and verifying all the data from your incoming lead-gen efforts, your email lists are full of bots, spam-traps, known complainers, invalid emails and other malicious email addresses.

Each and every one of these types of email addresses (plus others) must be suppressed, or removed from your lists.  And here’s why…

When you send to these addresses, ESP’s and ISP’s see your marketing and content efforts as sloppy, unclean and potentially spammy.  Keep sending to them and soon you’ll find all of your emails ending up in junk folders, as all of your marketing revenue dries up.

But what’s worse, if you don’t remove (suppress) spam complainers from your list, the very moment they hit the spam button, you could be looking at some serious legal issues.

Quick tip: Be sure that for all of your email content and marketing efforts, your “remove from list” button is clear, easy to find and it works.  This is a no-brainer.  Don’t ever send emails to a subscriber who flagged you as spam.

But what about the other types of email addresses?  The bots, spam-traps, known complainers and invalid addresses?  They too must be suppressed.  Because even if the consequences of leaving them in your list isn’t immediately seen by you, your business will certainly suffer.  Maybe catastrophically.

These types of addresses are a bit harder to suppress.  Especially if you’re trying to do it manually.  You see, since many of these types of malicious addresses never hit the “remove” button (as they’re not actual people), it’s harder to detect who they are.  And if “remove” is the only automated suppression you’re using, finding these addresses can be a nightmare.  A costly one at that.

Here’s another quick tip.  Hopefully, you receive email send reports.  And you examine them.  These reports can point out hard-bounces (invalid addresses) giving you the opportunity to manually remove them.  If you’re into manual labor, go ahead and remove these addresses by hand.

But in the world of automated digital marketing, the last thing you need to spend your valuable time on is tedious hand-work.  We’ll get to automated list suppression in just a moment.

Now, sometimes it’s not only malicious email addresses that need to be suppressed.  Let’s say you’re running a discount offer to your subscribers.  50% off a product.  The last people you want to see that offer are your subscribers who purchased at full price.  This could trigger calls for refunds, angry customers and distrust.

Offer specific email list suppression should also be done.  While ignoring suppression in this case may not lead directly to your sends ending up in junk, the ramifications are obvious.

And if you’re sending outside offers, and your client gives you a suppression file, you need to suppress these too…

How, you say?

Here’s where automated list suppression comes in.

EmailOversight automates this entire process for you.  Our technology automatically suppresses all the malicious addresses that are already in your lists, including hidden ones like bots, spam-traps and more. Addresses impossible to see with the naked eye.

But what’s even better, our API can actually suppress these malicious addresses as you collect them.  Before they ever reach your list!

That’s right, EmailOversight’s API keeps your email lists from ever encountering the addresses that are business killers.  By utilizing EmailOversight, your lists will be more hygienic, your email sends will get to the inbox and your revenues will go where they’re supposed to… up!

The days of manual list suppression are over.  Automated list suppression by EmailOversight is the easiest way to reduce labor costs, save time and build your business.