Help! My email is suspended. What happens now?

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You built the perfect marketing campaign; you imported leads from all of your external data sources; you sent the email campaign that will transform your business. Your first sale happens, then your second and third. Your leads are becoming customers. Everything is happening according to plan.

Then the unthinkable happens: you receive a notification that your ability to send emails has been suspended.

The potential impact becomes your immediate concern. All of your marketing efforts could be in jeopardy. As your confidence turns to chaos, you wonder:

How did this happen? I’m not a spammer!

Don’t panic. Even good senders can have their email suspended. Uploading the wrong marketing list could trigger high bounce rates or complaints. Sending content that recipients aren’t expecting could result in unusually high unsubscribes. There are plenty of actions that seem relatively harmless that can impact deliverability and reputation.

What triggers an email suspension on Kajabi?

Suspensions are triggered by events that put your reputation at risk: high bounce rates, complaints from email recipients, unusual (possibly fraudulent) account activity, and other important deliverability signals. As a result, you will not be able to send any emails during your suspension, even to engaged contacts. This is for your protection.

Kajabi sets limits for block listings, hard bounces, spam complaints (indirect), abuse complaints (direct), and unsubscribes. Each of these signals has a warning level and a suspension level. At the warning level, you might be contacted and offered steps to correct problem areas before they lead to suspension. At the suspension level, your email will be immediately suspended and you will be contacted with the required remediation steps.

Below you will find deliverability signals as well as fraudulent activities that could trigger an email suspension on Kajabi.

Deliverability Signals

Block listings: If one of your email campaigns is the cause of an IP blocklisting you will be suspended immediately. Based on Kajabi’s investigation, your account could even be terminated. If your personal sending domain is blocklisted, your account could be suspended if the potential impact could spread beyond your account or if the block is with a major mailbox provider.
Hard bounces: Kajabi’s limit for hard bounces is 5%. Anything in excess of that will result in email suspension. Well-vetted lists should never exceed 2% hard bounces.
Spam complaints (indirect): A spam complaint is when a recipient clicks the “report spam” button while viewing your email. Kajabi’s limit for spam complaints is 0.2% (one per 500 emails sent).
Abuse complaints (direct): An abuse complaint is when a recipient directly reaches out to Kajabi to complain, either by phone or email. All abuse complaints are treated seriously and investigated; however, a single abuse complaint will not automatically result in email suspension.
Unsubscribes: While unsubscribes are certainly a reality in email marketing, excessive unsubscribes indicate that there is a problem. Normal unsubscribe rates are between 0.5% and 2.0%. Kajabi automatically suspends email when a mailing has a 5% unsubscribe rate.

Unusual/Fraudulent Activity

Spam traps: Spam traps are email addresses that cannot legitimately be on a marketing list and are used to discover senders who aren’t following proper list management practices. Some are typos (user@outlok.com); some are recycled, which means they were valid once but haven’t been for a long time; some are pristine, meaning they have never been valid and cannot ever have signed up for email. Any of these can lead to block listings.
Content misalignment: If the content of your email campaign suddenly changes, your recipients might unsubscribe or complain. For example, if you regularly send out dog grooming tips but suddenly shift to sending political fundraiser campaigns, recipients might unsubscribe because the content isn’t what they signed up for, or they might send a spam complaint because they believe you are abusing their trust.

What should I do if my email is suspended?

First, take a deep breath and relax. Unless you are truly a spammer, your problem is fixable!

Email suspensions come with remediation steps. Typically, this will include unsubscribing contacts flagged as high risk and contacts that have not engaged with your email for more than six months. Unengaged contacts are at-risk of becoming recycled spam traps.

Second, examine your email acquisition and list management practices. To do so, ask yourself the following questions:

Are your signup forms double opt-in?
Do you use an email verification service to check new addresses?
Do you have a re-engagement strategy for inactive contacts?

If you didn’t answer all three questions with “yes” then you have areas for improvement. Following email marketing best practices will serve you by making sure you only send emails to recipients who want them. These are your future customers.

Finally, take a look at your email marketing program overall. This is a good time to consider how you acquire your prospects and how you engage with them.

Think about your own inbox: Which companies send you the right amount of emails? How long are the emails that you read most often? What compels you to click on a link in an email?

It’s okay to use your own experience to guide your decisions – you are a recipient of many marketing campaigns and that makes you an expert on what works for you!

I can send emails again!

We knew you could do it!

With all of this new information, you shouldn’t find yourself suspended again. Your email-sending reputation is in your control. Maintain good email list hygiene and pay attention to your metrics. Remember, there are no shortcuts to a great email reputation.

For more tips, read our blog post on improving email deliverability!

Using email with Kajabi

Kajabi offers an email marketing tool that is integrated with the rest of your knowledge commerce business. It’s easy to automate and streamline your business when your digital products, website, email, analytics, and payment processing are all in one place.

That’s the power of Kajabi’s all-in-one platform.

Ready to get started? Explore what you can do with Kajabi in a 14-day free trial.

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