Blacklist - Your email list can be ruined by other organizations - We need a better solution for SPAM!!

Brian Bates 2 · November 2018

So, John Doe is a donor to the Clean Water Fund and the Beat Cancer Org. He wants and gets emails and updates from both organizations. Somehow he gets subscribed to the PaperClip Fan Club page. Instead of opting out, he marks the email from the PaperClip Fan Club as SPAM.

Per KB 44027 (https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/44027) that email address is now Blacklisted, which is on the server level. As a result, John Doe will no longer receive emails from the Clean Water Fund or Beat Cancer because his email has been blacklisted at the server level.

In my argument with Blackbaud, if someone marks an email as SPAM, they are in fact opting out. Blackbaud knows the message (in most cases) that triggered the SPAM notification, why can't you treat SPAM as the equivalent to opting out and remove them from THAT organization vs. Blacklisting them which affects ALL organizations.

So just know, when you see an email bounce that reads something along the lines of: "Soft - previously marked as Hard Bounce" that email mostly likely has been blacklisted and it might not have even been your fault, but you're getting punished for it anyway.

This is the equivalent to using an ax to conduct open heart surgery.

There has to be a better way!

Samantha McGuin · November 2018

Hi,

I think I can help to clarify this some. For most Blackbaud email-sending products, including BBNC, spam complaints are held at the organization level. If I receive an email from the PaperClip Fan Club and mark it as spam, and my email address is also on the list for the Clean Water Fund, I will still continue receiving emails from the Clean Water Fund. However, if the PaperClip Fan Club tries to send me another message, Blackbaud will suppress it. This protects organizations against downgrades in email deliverability due to additional sends to recipients who have marked you as spam.

Blackbaud does maintain suppression lists that do span across customers. Hard bounces - that is, failed addresses, are held in a blacklist and suppressed across organizations. A failed email address (hard bounce, not soft bounce) is a failed email address, so we suppress on our end to protect all of our customers when a Mailbox Provider tells us an email address is invalid or no longer exists.

The recipient status message you referenced below - Previously marked as Hard Bounce - is ONLY used for hard bounces, which are true email failures. There is a status of - Previously marked as spam complaint - that will show if a message to that recipient from YOUR ORGANIZATION was marked as spam. If you keep that email address on your lists, any future attempted sends to that address will be suppressed and come back with that status.

I will work with Support to make this more clear on the KB you referenced.

Here's a resource that reviews our suppression lists if you're interested in more information.

Thanks,

Samantha McGuin

Principal Product Manager - Email Services

Blackbaud

Brian Bates 2 · November 2018

Samantha,

That is not what the Blackbaud email support
analyst told me over the phone. I outlined the exact scenario
and his response was, “yes, that is correct, you can be penalized
for other’s misdeeds.”

So I have now received conflicting information
from Blackbaud.

Brian

“Don't find fault, find a
remedy.”

-Henry
Ford

Brian Bates

Principal
Elevate

770-903-3987, ext. 30222 (o) | 678-358-6830 (m)

770-903-3988 (f)

bbates@elevateims.com

www.elevateims.com

@elevateims on Twitter

Samantha McGuin · November 2018

Brian,

Apologies for the conflicting information. If you could send me your Support case # I will reach out and see if I can get them on the same page. Our blacklist does have variations; sounds like some training is in order.

The link I sent to our Email Resource Center is the end-all be-all description of how our email delivery system works. I can assure you with 100% certainty that for BBNC, spam complaints are not shared across clients.

Feel free to reach out privately @ samantha.mcguin@blackbaud.com if you want to discuss further.

--Samantha

Sara Link · November 2018

Did the verdict come in on this one?

Cody Karst · November 2018

Yeah I would like to hear the final result too.

Darrin Fitzgerald · November 2018

Yes i would like to know this as well.

Samantha McGuin · November 2018

The final result is what I posted back to the original poster. If you are sending out of BBNC, spam complaints are not shared across customers. We do maintain an individual spam complaint suppression list for each organization, but a spam complaint from BBNC Client One will not affect Client Two's ability to send to that same email recipient.

Samantha McGuin

Principal Product Manager - Email Services

Blackbaud

Lindsay Doran · November 2018

This has come to my attention today. We had a number of email addresses return this message, and some of them we know for a fact are legitimate, working emails.

Here's our scenerio:

We used BBNC to send an email to our list last week, including john@doe.com
We received the "Previously marked as hard bounce" error message, which according to above replies would mean that email address is not valid.
This is a long-time donor and board member of ours, so we wanted to double check the error.
We sent an email from our personal inboxes. He received the personal email fine.

Is it possible that the system is not working how Blackbaud expected it to work? Is there something else that may be causing this error?

Samantha McGuin · November 2018

Hi Lindsey,

I would definitely recommend creating a Support case for this so that the Blackbaud team can investigate further. Bounces - both hard and soft, are messages we pass along directly from the mailbox provider - so at some point, the mailbox provider was rejecting messages to that address. There are a few different reasons that an address can hard bounce, more information can be found here:
https://docs.blackbaud.com/email-resource-center/faqs/failures. We do see rare occasions where mailbox providers create new bounce messages; sometimes these can be categorized as hard bounces until our system recognizes and recategorizes them. There are also cases where we've seen mailbox providers mistakenly hard bounce during network issues on their side for a period of time. We, unfortunately, are at the whim of mailbox providers and their operational changes just like other email service providers. The best course of action is to get a case through Support for us to troubleshoot this instance.

In the meantime, here are the instructions for your recipient to be removed from the suppression list:
To request that we remove an email address from the suppression list, the recipient must send a message from the affected address to unblockme@blackbaud.com and specifically request removal.

Thanks,

Samantha McGuin

Principal Product Manager

Blackbaud

Blacklist - Your email list can be ruined by other organizations - We need a better solution for SPAM!!

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