Who Can I Send Emails To Via Alchemer?

There are several requirements when it comes to contacts that you are permitted to send to using Alchemer Email campaigns. These requirements apply to your lists, as well as lists you may have obtained from your clients. 

1. Contacts must have knowingly opted to be part of your list.

In the email service provider industry the process by which you confirm that a contact wishes to receive emails from you is known as confirmed opt-in or double opt-in. Simply collecting an email address does not imply permission to send to that contact. Double opt-in works like so:

• First, someone must sign up through a subscribe form.
• Then, an email is immediately sent to the address they provided. The email contains a verification link which the recipient must click to confirm that they own the address. When the link is clicked, the person's email address is then and only then added to the contact list.

Double opt-in permission is required to send email via Alchemer. The double opt-in process ensures email addresses are correct, which reduces bounce rates. The process also reduces the probability of bounces and spam complaints. This helps us to maintain our sender reputation and improve deliverability rates for all of our customers. This is a very common requirement when using an email service provider.

2. Contact must have a valid email address

Alchemer will make sure that an email address that you are adding/uploading to your campaign or contact list is in-fact, a valid email address.

John.Smith@yourcompany.com is a valid email address, whereas John.Smith@, @yourcompany, or John are not.

3. A valid MX (Mail eXchange) record must exist for the domain

An MX record tells senders how to send email to a particular domain. Essentially we want to make sure that if your email is hero@alchemer.com, emails addressed to you are sent to the alchemer.com domain. Not sure if the domain you are trying to send to is a valid? Try a tool like this one: http://email-checker.net/

4. No group email addresses

Alchemer will not send email to any addresses uploaded* to Email Campaigns or Contact Lists that are considered group emails such as sales@yourcompany.com or info@abc.com.

*These group emails will be uploaded if part of your list - if you need to send email to group inboxes such as the above examples, use Alchemer's Custom Email Settings to send your emails via your SMTP server. Sending via an SMTP server is not subject to the above-mentioned group email restriction. Make sure to check with your Email Service Provider (ESP) regarding their policies on group emails.

Group or role-based email addresses are a huge can of worms when it comes to deliverability. These addresses are often unattended; as a result, they commonly result in bounces due to a full inbox. In addition, if they go to many individuals they are likely to result in multiple spam reports all of which affect the likelihood that your next campaign reaches its recipients.

Further, we think it is a better experience for survey invites to address the recipient by name; the more personal the better when it comes to participation in surveys! If you have an individual expecting a survey invite to arrive at info@ we recommend reaching out to them obtain their email address.

Please refer below for a list of group emails that will not be sent to (SMTP excepted):

5. Emails sent to the address must not have bounced in the last 30 days

If Alchemer has sent an email to a specific email address and that email has bounced, that address will be prevented from being added to a future email campaign for 30 days.

How are these requirements enforced?

With respect to double-opt in, by using an email campaign you are implicitly confirming that you have permission to email all contacts. 

The rest of the requirements are evaluated when contacts are uploaded. This practice mitigates the effects of high bounce rates and and spam reports would have on the reputation of Alchemer IP's. This, protects the deliverability of emails for all customers.

Finally, on send of an email campaign we run a health check on all campaigns by first sending to a random 5% sample of the list. If the bounce rate of this sample is higher than 10%, we will cancel the send and alert the user who created the campaign via email. If the bounce rate is below 10%, up to 5,000 messages will send every 30 minutes until all messages are sent. Learn about best practices for avoiding campaign cancellation. Has your campaign been canceled? Learn what you can do next!