The lifeblood of an email program is an IP address. It's the necessary mechanic buried deep within the email machine that makes delivery possible. As IP technology continues its evolution and maturation, ISPs are now able to store sending reputation on IP addresses and also the Senders that are using them. An IP address with a positive reputation is priceless, as it significantly improves an email campaign's chances of reaching the inbox. Yesmail Market Intelligence recently conducted an IP forensic examination on a top retailer and has identified that their ESP may be using their IP addresses to improve performance of campaigns sent from other marketers.
We have uncovered that during the past 12 months, this retailer's email campaigns are being sent from over 19 different IP addresses (see Figure 1). This seems highly irregular, as programs similar in size to this retailer only require 4-8 IP addresses on average. Additionally, Yesmail Market Intelligence has detected over 25 other major companies mailing off these same IP addresses (see Figure 2) during the same time that this retailer had used, or was using them to deploy email campaigns.
Retailers, like these, may have no idea their ESP is leveraging their reputable IP addresses and reputation to increase performance of less established marketers and reach recipient inboxes without having first built their own reputation. Sharepool technology is highly frowned upon by the ISP community and leads to several other deliverability issues long-term. Marketers should always request dedicated IP addresses from their ESP, as it only takes a single marketer with a faulty campaign to cause an entire sharepool to become blocked, or worse, tarnish the reputation of the established marketers using these IPs.
The million dollar question remains: Do these retailers know they are sharing IPs?
Curious to learn if your IPs are being used by other marketers? Email sales@yesmail.com or contact us directly at 1-877-YESMAIL.
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