When it comes to email marketing, one of the most important considerations is deliverability. You want to make sure that your emails are actually reaching your subscribers' inboxes, rather than getting caught in spam filters or blocked altogether. One way to improve your deliverability rates is by using a shared IP in NotifyVisitors.This shared IP address provides a cost-effective solution for businesses to use the NotifyVisitors platform, but it also comes with some guidelines that must be followed to ensure optimal performance and delivery of messages.

In this article, we'll explore what a shared IP address is, how it works in NotifyVisitors, and what you need to know in order to use it effectively.

What is an IP address 

An IP address is a unique identifier that is assigned to every device on the internet. When you send an email, your IP address is used to identify you as the sender. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) use IP addresses to determine whether or not to deliver emails to recipients' inboxes. If your IP address has a bad reputation or is associated with spam, your emails are more likely to be blocked or sent to spam folders.

What are shared IP addresses

A shared IP address is an IP address that is used by multiple users. When you use NotifyVisitors, you are assigned a shared IP address that is also used by other NotifyVisitors customers. This can provide certain advantages, such as increased deliverability rates due to the reputation of the shared IP. However, it also means that your reputation on the shared IP can be affected by the actions of other customers. For example, if another customer on the shared IP sends spam or engages in other shady email practices, it could negatively impact your reputation and deliverability.To avoid this, NotifyVisitors has set up a few guidelines which are mandatory for everyone to follow.

How to use a shared IP address in NotifyVisitors effectively

Here are some guidelines to follow under a shared IP address for NotifyVisitors:

1. Ensure that your contact list is composed solely of individuals who have subscribed to your list. Do not rent, share, or scrape email lists.

To maintain a positive sender reputation and ensure email deliverability, it is essential to only have contacts who have voluntarily subscribed to receive your messages. Renting, sharing, scraping, or co-registering email lists can result in sending unsolicited emails, negatively impacting revenue and deliverability. ISPs monitor spam complaints, and exceeding a 0.1% rate can reduce the chances of your emails reaching the primary folder. It is better to receive unsubscribes than spam complaints. Utilizing NotifyVisitors double opt-in feature in Signup forms to gather subscribers and ensuring they are genuinely interested in your messages can help maintain a healthy sender reputation.

2. Regularly update your email list to ensure customer engagement

To prevent your emails from being marked as spam, it's important to regularly update your email list. Email providers like Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail use engagement tracking to detect and filter spam, so it's crucial to keep your list engaged. ISPs track how users interact with your messages, and a lack of engagement can lead to your emails being sent to spam. To maintain an engaged list, remove inactive recipients who don't open your emails. It's better to have a smaller but highly engaged email list than a large unengaged one.

3. Optimize Your Email Design for Improved Deliverability

Successful email marketing requires effective email design. However, optimizing email design is not just about aesthetics. It is also necessary to improve email deliverability. This can be achieved through maintaining a proper text-to-image ratio and taking into consideration Gmail's message size limit.

› Text-to-Image Ratio:

Maintain a healthy text-to-image ratio in your campaign or automated email to avoid triggering spam filters. Including two to four sentences per image helps provide context to both the ISP and your recipients.

› Gmail Clipping:

Be mindful of Gmail's message size restriction of 102KB. Preview your email in a test message and adjust the content as necessary to prevent it from being clipped. If your email is clipped, recipients will need to click a "View entire message" link to see the full content, which may cause them to overlook the unsubscribe link and potentially mark your message as spam, damaging your sender's reputation.

4. Warm Up the new domain

To avoid being flagged as spam by email providers, it is crucial to warm up a new domain before sending large volumes of emails. NotifyVisitors suggests gradually increasing the email sending volume and adding more subscribers over a few weeks. Consistency in "from" address and IP address helps build trust with email providers. By monitoring email performance metrics closely, successful email deliverability and engagement from subscribers can be ensured. To know more please refer to the article on “Mastering Email Domain Reputation: A Guide to Warm-Up and Ramp-Up Process”.

5. Maintaining a Positive Domain Reputation

If you've previously attempted to promote your products by sending numerous identical emails directly from your inbox, your domain's reputation may have been negatively impacted. Emails sent using a negatively impacted domain can harm the shared IPs reputation as well. So it is advised to maintain a positive domain reputation. 

6. Best practices for avoiding spam filters

Certain types of content can trigger spam filters, causing your emails to be flagged as spam and sent to the recipient's junk folder. Avoid these common mistakes to increase the likelihood of your emails being delivered to the inbox:

› Using excessive exclamation points or phrases like "click here" or "once in a lifetime opportunity"

› Using all caps in the subject line or body text

› Sending a test email to multiple recipients within the same company

› Hash-busting, or inserting random characters in the subject line or content

› Overusing sales-related language such as "prize," "free," or "bonus"

By following these best practices, you can increase the chances of your emails being successfully delivered to your subscribers' inboxes.

7. Monitor your email deliverability rates

Monitoring email deliverability rate is crucial, especially when using a shared IP. A rapid decline in deliverability not only impacts your domain reputation but also the reputation of the shared IP. To effectively monitor email performance, our email stats function provides comprehensive tracking capabilities. It offers valuable metrics such as open rate, click rate, bounce rate, total deliveries, total failures, daily graphs, and more. By analyzing these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into how your audience is engaging with your content and identify areas for improvement.

We advise using the following key email metrics for comparison:

› Open rates above 30%                       › Click rates above 1%

› Bounce rate below 1%                       › Unsubscribe rates below 0.1% 

› Spam rates below 0.1%

Regularly comparing your performance against these metrics allows you to assess whether your campaigns are improving, declining, or remaining stable. Negative trends, such as declining open or click rates, should be promptly addressed to identify and resolve any underlying issues.

8. Optimize your email list with segmentation

Segmenting your email list is crucial for optimizing your email campaigns. By dividing your list into specific groups based on subscriber behavior and preferences, you can send targeted campaigns that cater to their interests. This not only increases engagement and open rates, but it also helps protect your reputation by avoiding the sending of irrelevant or unwanted emails. Moreover, segmenting your email list can significantly improve your deliverability rates, ensuring that your emails land in the subscribers' inboxes instead of being flagged as spam.

9. Use email authentication

Implementing email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC can also help protect your domain and email reputation when using a shared IP. These protocols help prevent spam and phishing attacks by verifying the authenticity of your emails. By implementing these protocols, you can help ensure that your emails are trusted by ISPs and not blocked or flagged as spam.

10. Collaborate with NotifyVisitors support

If you encounter any issues with email deliverability and performance, NotifyVisitors support can assist you in adhering to the guidelines mentioned above. They can provide expert advice on email best practices, monitor your IP reputation, and suggest ways to improve your sending frequency. Collaborating with their support team can be highly beneficial in optimizing your email campaigns. Also, you can refer to the article “Diagnosing And Resolving Email Delivery Failures."

Wrap up

In conclusion, using a shared IP address in NotifyVisitors can be an effective way to improve email deliverability rates and reach your subscribers' inboxes. However, it's important to take steps to protect your reputation on the shared IP and ensure that your email campaigns are compliant with best practices and regulations. By keeping your email list clean, following email marketing best practices, monitoring your deliverability rates, segmenting your list, and implementing email authentication protocols, you can help ensure that your emails are well-received by your subscribers and avoid being flagged as spam. By taking these steps, you can maximize the benefits of using a shared IP address in NotifyVisitors and achieve greater success with your email marketing campaigns.