What is the Validity Certification program?
Validity Certification is the industry’s most unique and powerful allowlist, providing benefits at major mailbox providers to ensure your emails get delivered to the inbox. More messages in the inbox means more opportunities for your customers to see your message, and ultimately drive increased ROI from the email channel.
Learn more about Certification and its benefits.
How does Certification work?
Validity Certification provides mailbox providers with an allowlist of trusted senders meeting high email program sending standards. Certification covers more than 2.5 billion mailboxes worldwide at top mailbox providers, spam filters, and security vendors. The allowlist is built on a network of trust between senders and receivers founded on the common goal of ensuring that good email reaches the inbox.
Once you're accepted into the program, your Certified IPs are placed on an allowlist that mailbox providers around the world access through a secure DNS server lookup. Through the DNS, Validity shares data with mailbox providers, spam filters, and security vendors so that you receive benefits the day you are approved.
Are there other Certification programs, or allowlists?
Within the email industry, there are three types of allowlists: personal allowlists, allowlists provided directly through mailbox providers, and commercial allowlists.
To get on a personal allowlists, senders ask subscribers to add their sending address to their address books or contact lists.
Other commercial providers provide allowlists, but many of these provide services strictly for Email Service Providers (ESPs) or B2B companies.
Why would I want to be Certified with Validity?
You are a good sender who wants to get into the most inboxes as quickly as possible. You don’t have time to apply to allowlists at multiple mailbox providers, or wait for senders to manually place you in their priority inboxes.
You also don’t need to waste time applying for other commercial allowlists because these offer less mailbox provider and filter coverage in fewer geographical areas.
Validity's Certified allowlist is the best one available because it gets you into more inboxes at the mailbox providers you care about most.
What benefits can other Validity products provide?
If you are currently blocked by any major mailbox provider, such as Microsoft, you may need to resolve other issues before being reviewed for Certification. Feel free to reach out to our sales team to inquire about what product may help you do this.
Though the Certification program cannot be used to improve the deliverability of day-to-day corporate email (such as the non-templated, free form email you exchange between employees and clients), feel free to ask us what other products or services that might be of help.
How do I get Certified?
Contact us! Once you have filled out and submitted the contact form, a sales representative will contact you to discuss your needs and eligibility requirements. If eligibility requirements are met, a link to the application form will be provided.
When your application form is received, analysts will then review your email practices, including the way you handle permission, privacy, disclosures, legal requirements and more. They’ll also make sure you’re sending from secure, authenticated servers. And, of course, they’ll check your reputation; you can’t be on any major blocklists or have high spam trap hits.
If you can pass the audit, you’ve proved that you have superior performance standards and a strong reputation which means: you’re in!
What is the process and timeline for becoming Certified?
Once we receive your application, we’ll send an email that we received it and are working hard to see if you’re eligible.
Because we need to check dozens of factors about your email program, and wait for data to be sent from participating mailbox providers, the average audit process takes about a month.
During this time, we will send status updates, or, ask questions when necessary. We'll let you know as soon as we are finished with our audit.
What types of email programs cannot be Certified?
We cannot Certify email programs that:
- Send email from dynamic IP addresses
- Have not been sending from a dedicated IP for 60 days
- Send content on behalf of third-parties
- Send corporate email
If your program sends multiple types of email from one IP, segment allowable types listed above prior to applying for Certification.
Do senders have to Certify all of their IP addresses?
Senders can choose to Certify some IP addresses, or all of them. Also, marketing and transactional email can be sent by Certified IPs. However, any Certified IP must maintain measurable sending volume and meet Certification requirements.
What happens if I’m not eligible?
If your email program is not eligible, an analyst will give you a customized explanation about what the problem was and why it happened. If the changes needed are within eligibility requirements, you’ll get the opportunity make corrections to those items. Then, you can just resend your application at no additional cost.
