Playbook objective
This playbook’s objectives are to:
- Learn common causes of Certification suspensions
- Learn how to use Everest to help keep your IPs in compliance to maximize Certification benefits.
Ensure you have received confirmation of acceptance into the Certification program from the Validity Certification team. Certification is an add-on service to Everest requiring an application and approval process.
- Learn more about Certification
- Contact the Certification team at certification@validity.com for status updates.
- If you are a new Everest customer with no prior relationship with Validity, complete onboarding to ensure you are familiar with navigating and using Everest.
- If you were a Return Path or 250ok customer and are moving to Everest, complete your migration process.
- Ensure you have completed the Everest setup guides.
Important! Be sure you know your Certification service tier. Your service tier is volume-based and there are limits to the number of Certified IPs your account may have as outlined in the Certification Requirements. You can find your subscription information by navigating to: My Everest>Account Settings>Subscription.
- Important metrics related to Certification
- How Certification fits into your process
- Establishing a baseline
- Set up Certification alerts
- Common causes of Certification suspensions
- How to use Everest to identify issues and stay in compliance
- What to do next
Read the Certification Requirements for additional information about compliance thresholds.
Certified senders see inbox placement rates 33 percentage points higher than similar non-certified senders. Keeping your IPs in compliance with Certification standards is vital to ensure your email messages reach your subscribers. Certification metrics displayed in Everest are provided by participating partners' proprietary first-party data feeds.
From Everest:
- Volume: The volume of email received by a provider from your IP.
- Inbox placement rate: The percentage of email delivered to the inbox.
- Complaints: Subscribers marking your email as spam measuring consent and engagement.
- Spam Traps: A combination of pristine and recycled spam trap metrics measuring list acquisition and list hygiene practices.
- Critical
- Significant
- Cloudmark
- Validity Trap Network
- Sender Reputation Data (SRD): A proprietary Microsoft metric measuring consent and engagement with a select group of evolving Microsoft email accounts.
Read the Certification Requirements for additional information about compliance thresholds.
A traditional email marketing process consists of three phases: Pre-Send, In-Flight, and Monitoring. Deciding what campaign to run takes planning based on your company’s business objectives and how you perform against the competition.
Pre-send
- Inform your email campaign strategy with Everest’s Competitive Intelligence feature.
- Plan campaign
- Select target subscriber list
- Design campaign
- Validate target subscriber list using Everest’s List Validation feature.
- Test campaign design using Everest’s Design & Content feature.
In-Flight
- Send campaign to subscribers and the Everest seed list.
- Certification benefits applied by participating partners.
- View your campaign’s inbox placement, spam, and missing results using Everest’s Inbox Placement feature.
- View your Certified IPs performance for advanced deliverability insights
Monitoring
- Monitor engagement metrics using Everest’s Engagement feature, your ESP, or internal sending platform.
- Monitor sending reputation metrics to understand the deliverability impact.
- Monitor DMARC compliance to identify unauthorized use of your domain and brand using Everest’s Infrastructure feature.
Record baseline deliverability and engagement metrics in a spreadsheet prior to your Certification activation date if available so you can compare pre and post Certification performance. If you do not have access to historical data prior to joining Certification, establish your baseline after your Certification activation date. We recommend establishing baseline values after 15-30 (depending on your sending frequency) days of volume in the Certification program and 15-30 days of sending to the Everest seed list. Include other metrics important to your business as needed to help you identify ROI, such as revenue or average order value.
- Inbox placement
- Open rate
- Click rate
Dashboards
Add two dashboards to display suspension impact and your IP status.
- Login to Everest
- Navigate to My Everest>Dashboards
- Click Add Widget
- Click the Certification tile
- Locate Certification: IP Status and click Select
- Accept the default display preferences and click Next
- Click Save Widget
- Repeat steps 3-7 for the Suspension Impact widget
Alerts
Get notified when your IPs are suspended and enabled due to performance issues or a security compromise.
- Login to Everest
- Navigate to My Everest>Alerts
- Click New Alert
- Enter a Description: Certification Performance Alert
- Select the Certification Category
- Select If my.. IPs are suspended/enabled due to performance
- Select how you wish to be notified and enter any required information
- Click Save Alert
- Repeat steps 3-8 for a Certification Security Alert for IPs are suspended/enabled due to Security
There are many potential causes for IPs to be suspended from the Certified program and knowing where potential pitfalls lie and how to avoid or handle them can help keep your IPs in compliance.
- Security compromise: A security compromise is when an unauthorized third-party gains access to your system and sends spam. Most ESPs and modern sending platforms have layers of technical protections but no system is 100% protected.
- Ensure your system is protected with the latest virus and malware protection software.
- Run periodic security checks on your system to test for open relays and other vulnerabilities.
- Train employees to recognize, report, and delete phishing messages.
- Volume and frequency increases: The holidays are a time many senders increase volume, sending frequency, and may be less disciplined about maintaining data quality standards.
- Have a plan in place to increase volume and frequency over time to keep complaints within performance thresholds.
- Monitor performance closely and be prepared to change tactics should your metrics trend negatively towards performance thresholds.
- Sending to a suppression list: Accidents happen when working within tight deadlines.
- Implement internal process controls to help reduce the likelihood of sending to your suppression list.
- If you send to a suppression list, quick identification can help minimize the fallout. If the metrics are bad enough to cause a suspension, your metrics will normalize once your normal sending patterns and metrics resume.
- Poor list acquisition and hygiene practices: One of the most common causes for Certification suspensions are introducing bad data into your email list file which can lead to increases in complaints, spam traps, and blocklistings.
- Be sure all list acquisition methods follow Certification consent requirements.
- Implement and follow a process to suppress unengaged subscribers after a period of inactivity suitable for your business.
- Sending to old, dormant email addresses: Old, dormant addresses are a high risk for being spam traps and causing high complaints.
- Jeopardizing Certification benefits isn't worth sending to old, dormant addresses who are unlikely to buy from you.
- If you must send to old, dormant addresses for legal or other reasons, send to them in small batches over a period of days or weeks (depending on the volume).
- Microsoft SRD rates: Microsoft's Sender Reputation Data (SRD) is a feedback system used by Microsoft in addition to their Junk Mail Reporting program for identifying potential spam.
Monitor performance daily to identify and fix potential issues quickly and to ensure all IPs remain in compliance to receive Certification benefits.
1 . Login to Everest
2. Navigate to In-Flight>Certification
3. If you did not check your DPR, review the status dashboard for Partially Suspended, Suspended, or Warnings.
4. Check Activity & Alerts to help prioritize what to look at first
Certified Volume and Suspension Trends
1. Locate the Certified Volume and Suspension Trends tile
- If you have suspended IPs, look for volume trends and compare to known campaign dates.
- Investigate campaigns correlating with the suspension.
- Roll your mouse over the date on the graph to get more detail.
Microsoft and Yahoo trends
1. Locate the Microsoft and Yahoo trends section
2. For each Certified IP, look for negative SRD and complaint trends.
- If you see negative trends for a specific IP, investigate your campaigns in the last week to see if there are issues with any list segments, bad new data, or mail sent to a suppression list.
- Increases in volume and frequency around the holidays may cause an increase in negative trend data. If you suspect holiday traffic is putting your IPs at risk of suspension, talk internally about mitigation steps such as decreasing volume and frequency, sending to more targeted list segments, and not sending email to dormant or previously suppressed addresses.
IP Performance
1. Locate the IP Performance tile and click each category tab showing potential issues.
2. Click the details arrow for each IP
3. Review the Trends and identify potential problems areas by using the colored emoji indicators.
4. View specific metrics on the graph by clicking on the metric you want to exclude
5. Click Problematic Campaigns to view a list of recent campaigns contributing to the issue for that IP
6. Investigate campaigns contributing to the problem and look for potential causes related to the audience to whom you are sending email. Keep in mind the common causes for Certification suspensions as listed above.
*Don't forget! Use Everest's other features to help troubleshoot potential causes of a Certification suspension.
- Pre-Send>List Validation
- Did you send to a large number of invalid or risky addresses?
- In-Flight>Inbox Placement
- Are there specific IPs, domains, campaigns or email streams showing deliverability problems that correlate to your Certification issue?
- Monitoring>Reputation
- Are there any sending reputation metric anomalies or correlations?
- Monitoring>Engagement
- Are there any engagement metric anomalies or correlations?
1. Monitor Certification trend data daily to ensure IPs stay in compliance.
2. Continue reading our other Everest playbooks to help take your email marketing program to the next level.
