Email Deliverability Journal – Sep 11th

To Blocklist or Not Blocklist?

Hi,

Today, I’ll share a conversation with a potential Upwork client. She told me they were blacklisted on SURBL.org and needed to figure out why and get delisted ASAP.

After the initial discussions, she mentioned she was deciding between me and another professional. She then asked for my opinion on his guidelines. Here’s the conversation.

KR (client):
What are your thoughts on this? I need to let the owner of our companies know who we will go with and while this guys is cheaper you seem to understand what we need.

She then shared the conversation she had with the other freelancer:

AS (freelancer):
I will be need cloudflare and email host access for configure SPF DKIM records only for smooth email communication. No needed to modify other type of DNS records

I am expert in DNS management. Nothing would be disturbed or destroy

Currently your email spam issues increase due to missing authentication protocols

KR (client):
Also, we uploaded contacts from one of our sales reps and I believe we were reported as SPAM and now cannot send anything through ZOHO. We’re trying to get our email addresses cleaned up and anything else needed to get removed from SURBL.org. Can you assist us with getting delisted?

AS (freelancer):
These type of blacklist authorities does not affect on deliverability. These would be remove automatically

Send through ZOHO? What does it mean!

Above 2 domains are setup on google workspace and office 365

And continued the conversation with me:

I know this is not standard practice, but I don’t know that he understands what we need, and I want to hire the right person. and just from speaking with you, I think you get it.

Is what he saying true?

My reply to her:

“Hi _______,

I understand your concern, and this type of situation is relatively common. I generally avoid commenting on opinions from third parties who are not present; when I need to challenge an opinion, I prefer to do so directly with the person, as it gives them the opportunity to explain a point that I might have missed.

Having clarified that what I can say about blocklists is that some can indeed be disregarded, but you shouldn’t simply ignore all of them and assume everything is fine. This article from a renowned author I follow and admire explains the topic well.

Regarding tips for you to make the best choice… when I choose a professional for a specific job or test a new platform, I usually like to do this test: I ask about something I know the answer to (in the case of a platform, I look for a feature I know how it should work.)

Then I see the answer I receive (or how the feature is on the platform) and compare it with the expected result. This usually gives me a good sense of the quality of the professional (or the platform.)

Additionally, I suggest reading customer reviews. This helps me a lot.

Lastly, I invite you to explore the content I share about email deliverability at https://hand-delivered.email.

I hope this helps 🙂

KR,
Fabrício”

---

If you have questions regarding email deliverability and automation, comment below and I will reply.

Cheers,
Fabrício