Both email service providers and SMS network providers have a variety of automations in place to help protect consumers. These processes work to reduce spam and help prevent individuals from falling prey to phishing attempts. They also help ensure legitimate businesses follow legal requirements when messaging their clients.

In this guide we will explore some best practice recommendations to help reduce the chances that your business' messages will be blocked. We will also take a look at some legal requirements for SMS messaging. Sticking to these guidelines and requirements is the best way to maintain the deliverability of messages being sent from your BusyPaws account.

Each business' messaging account has an associated sending reputation. This reputation impacts the deliverability of the business' messages as well as the number of messages they are able to send each hour. Any kind of message rejection will negatively impact the sender's reputation. This includes bounced or blocked emails and spam complaints.

Your sending reputation may be Excellent, Good, or Poor, depending on the ratio of successful to failed sends. This means that the more unsuccessful sends occur for your account, the more likely it is that your reputation will drop. While it is expected that all accounts may get some rejections, too many will negatively skew your account's ratio, resulting in a poorer reputation.

You can find your business' current reputation status by heading to the Email Messaging settings page of your BusyPaws account.

An Excellent sending reputation will be listed in green, Good in purple, and Poor in red. Note that accounts with a Poor sending reputation will also list a yellow warning message indicating that mail deliverability may be impacted.

When a message (email or SMS) is sent to a client but is rejected (i.e. is marked spam or is blocked/bounces), they will be automatically unsubscribed from messages of that format. In addition, their email or phone number will be added to a Rejection Denylist. Inclusion on that list prevents future messages from being sent to the listed address/number, even if the "Unsubscribed from email"/"Unsubscribed from SMS" checkbox on their profile has been manually deselected.

A client's message subscription status can be found in the "Contact Details" section of their profile. By default, all clients are subscribed to receive transactional messaging from your business when their profile is created. If marked unsubscribed, whether manually or automatically, the client will no longer receive any messages of that type.

If a client reaches out to request that they no longer receive messages of a certain format (email or SMS) it is best to manually unsubscribe them. That can help prevent future spam complaints and thus protect your business' sending reputation.

The following items can increase the likelihood that your message is treated as spam. While their usage does not guarantee your message will be blocked by spam filters, the more they are included in a single message, the higher the chances that your content will be filtered to junk/spam, quarantined, or blocked outright.

It is important to note as well that not all spam filters are created equal. It's very common that email addresses associated with someone's place of work will have a more aggressive spam filter. This can make it much harder your the client to receive messages from your business. In most cases, it can be helpful to encourage your clients to use their personal email to book your services, rather than their work email.

There are a few message setups that are very frequently blocked or caught by spam filters. They include:

All of the above listed messages present very similarly to phishing/spam messages. As a result, many of the automations providers and networks have in place will prevent those messages from reaching your clients.

While the previous two sections of this guide discussed items that may increase the chances your messages will be marked spam, there is some content that will cause your messages to be blocked without question. This is the case for any topics/items that are prohibited by law and includes the following:

Note that the inclusion of any of the above listed topics in your messaging can result in your account being permanently blocked from using that messaging format. This is especially important to note for those with an approved A2P campaign for SMS messaging in the United States.

For more detailed information and examples, particularly with respect to SMS messaging, check out the following two help articles provided by Twilio:

If you have a new account it is also worth noting that a lack of sending history can likewise make it more likely for email providers to filter out your messages. As you build your sending history (i.e. send messages to your clients) this generally improves, provided you follow the best practices discussed in this help guide.