Dedicated Sendgrid email sending IP marked as red in SNDS

Question

Hi everybody!

I'm Clément, CTO at Snowball, a french fintech and educational content publishing startup.

Basically, we are sending educational and vulgarization newsletters about managing budget, finance, investment, ...

We were previously hosted on Substack and recently migrated all our subscribers and content to our own developed platform.

We are using Sendgrid to send the mails to our subscribers and are sending around 5000 mails a day and 70000 mails once a week (for a newsletter which almost all our subscribers are subscribed to).

Our delivery rate is around 99.5% every time but a lot of hotmail, live, outlook customers are complaining about not receiving our content or the newsletter being sent to spam.

I subscribed few days ago to SNDS and when I check today, I saw that our dedicated IP address is flagged as red. However our complaint rate is <0.1% (according to SNDS but also according to Sendgrid).

We also have very few bounces (and Sendgrid automatically filter those out for us on top of us cleaning out the email list regularly).

I'm a bit puzzled and I'm not sure how to handle this and get our IP back to green.

We are definitely not spammers. We do double opt-in when users subscribes (they fill in a form and then receive an email to confirm there address before being added to our subscribers list) and we don't collect email in any other way.

Our content can often be pretty lengthy, have some images and links. But none of them are broken.

We also do have so "edgy" term in our email as we are talking about finance and investment.

Could you please help me understand why our IP is flagged red and how to solve this and get our Hotmail/Live/Outlook users receive our content again?

Thanks a lot

Best regards

Clément

Answer 1

Dear Clément,

Thanks for using Microsoft products and posting in the forums!

I realize that you're using a mass sending email business when a small group of users can't receive emails or emails are marked as spam, I understand your frustration.

Here are some potential reasons why your Sendgrid IP might be flagged as red in SNDS and steps you can take to resolve this issue:

Possible Reasons for IP Flagging:

Content Analysis: Certain keywords, phrases, or formatting in your emails might be triggering spam filters. Words related to finance and investment can sometimes be flagged.

Image-to-Text Ratio: Emails with a high ratio of images to text can be flagged as spam. Aim for at least 40% of your email content to be text.

Poor Engagement: Low engagement rates (e.g., few opens or clicks) can negatively impact your sender reputation.

Authentication Issues: Ensure your emails pass SPF, DKIM, and DMARC checks. Proper authentication can significantly improve deliverability.

IP Reputation: Your IP might have a poor reputation due to previous usage or other factors

Steps to Improve Deliverability:

Review Content: Avoid using "spammy" words and ensure your content is engaging and relevant.

Optimize Image-to-Text Ratio: Ensure a balanced ratio of images to text in your emails.

Engage Subscribers: Encourage subscribers to add your email address to their safe contact list. This can improve engagement and deliverability.

Authenticate Emails: Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your domain to ensure your emails are properly authenticated.

Warm Up IP: Gradually increase the volume of emails sent from your IP to build a positive reputation.

Monitor Blacklists: Regularly check if your IP or domain is listed on any blacklists and request delisting if necessary.

Implementing these best practices should help improve your IP reputation and email deliverability.

If the issue persists, consider reaching out to Sendgrid support for further assistance, they may be able to give you more professional advice.

Best regards,

Harris-MSFT |Microsoft Community support specialist