Email marketing is the most cost-effective digital marketing channel. Almost every online business, whether big or small, uses emails to reach prospects and customers.
However, email blacklisting poses a big problem that can negatively affect email marketing efforts. If your IP address is blacklisted, then all your emails will land in spam resulting in zero outcomes.
This article will discuss SMTP servers’ role in optimizing your email delivery process so that it is not labeled as spam.
Let’s begin with the basics first.
What is Email Relay?
Email relay is a simple process of transferring emails from one server to another. Let us understand the entire concept with the help of an example.
For instance, if you wish to reach out to your audience and educate them about the “price drops about your products” through an email, then your company’s Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server will relay that particular email to your recipient’s server.
Email relay happens when the information exchange takes place from one server to another. If you send email messages to your colleague who uses the same email server as yours, then there is no need for a relay.
What is SMTP Relay?
SMTP relay is a protocol that ensures emails sent from a sender arrive safely in the recipient’s inbox. It refers to a process of sharing emails from one server to another. SMTP relay runs on the cloud instead of your own data center.
The process in which SMTP relay works is quite simple. Your SMTP service provider will receive a request from your server and queues it for its scheduled delivery to the recipient’s inbox.
If the email message is successfully delivered, then the process is completed. But, if it fails to get delivered to the recipient’s email address, it will generate a non-delivery report (NDR), and the email message will get back to the sender, briefing about the reasons for failure.
Why Are SMTP Relay Services Important For Businesses?
When it comes to businesses required to send emails in higher frequency to more than one recipient, the chances are high that the emails will land in the spam folder. Considering the worst situation, the IP address of the sender might get blocked.
This happens because companies like Gmail, Yahoo, and other email service providers put a cap on the number of emails you can exchange daily to combat spam. Businesses cross this limit too often, and their emails land in the spam box.
In the first situation, senders will never know whether the message they wanted to communicate to the receiver reached them or not. And secondly, receivers will remain entirely unaware of the emails because they land in their spam folder.
SMTP relay services help solve this problem and allow companies to send and receive several emails every day without worrying that their emails will land in spam. Peace of mind is guaranteed, and businesses can concentrate on nurturing the leads instead of worrying whether their emails are reaching the intended recipients or not.
How To Use SMTP Server With An Email Service Provider?
An SMTP service provider ensures that you, as a business, can send bulk emails without having to fear about your emails getting into spam.
Besides, an SMTP server offers a comprehensive messaging delivery platform, is effortlessly scalable, and offers insights into real-time analytics. Moreover, no additional hardware or software costs are involved, making it highly scalable.
Here is how you can configure the SMTP server with an email service provider:
Step 1: Go to the “Tools” menu and select the voice “Account Settings.”
Step 2: Select “Outgoing Server (SMTP) Settings”
Step 3: Click on Add and fill in the details in the popup window like description, server name, port, connection security, authentication, and user name (your email address).
That’s it; your SMTP server will now work with your email provider.
Benefits of Using SMTP Relay Service Provider
Here are some of the most significant benefits of using an SMTP relay service provider:
- It comes with faster delivery of your business emails via dedicated IP addresses.
- Marketing emails are guaranteed to reach the primary folder of the recipient.
- You can send email messages to a large number of recipients using the SMTP server.
- It protects the server from getting blacklisted.
How To Track SMTP Server?
With the ever-evolving technology, getting real-life information about your email’s open rate and the recipients who chose to unsubscribe from your emails can be found easily with smart SMTP trackers. You can use a software called ServerSMTP that gives you all the information related to the emails you sent. It also helps you figure out whether your emails were actually delivered to the intended recipient or bounced back.
Tracking the real-time value of the emails sent can be very useful for businesses that send cold emails to strategize their next big move.
How To Select A Correct SMTP Relay Port?
SMTP primarily uses four different types of ports. You should select a port according to your exact needs.
- Port 25 – It is usually known as a standard SMTP port. It is ideally used for SMTP relays instead of SMTP submissions.
- Port 587 – It is the default port that supports secured transmissions via TLS.
- Port 465 – Port 465 is no longer an acknowledged standard. Consider using port 2525 and port 587 before you get on port 465.
- Port 2525 – If your port 587 gets blocked, you can use port 2525 as an alternative.
These four ports are widely used because they are open almost always, allowing your emails to reach their destination server without any hassle.
Final Thoughts
Never ignore the importance of email marketing. Using SMTP servers through an email service provider will ensure that your emails reach the prospects so that your sales team can initiate the next step. Do not ignore the importance of SMTP servers because you definitely need them to get the best returns on your email marketing efforts.