DEAs and their effect on Email Reputation

Recently we came across an article being spread re: how Disposable Email Addresses (DEA) effect both the consumer and company. It listed some of the pros to why consumer's prefer to use a disposable email (which we've covered in detail in the past: here, here, and here) and the cons that companies have to deal with when getting these DEAs in their email list.

Even after some points were brought up that were debatable, they brought one erroneous point up that we'd like to correct and help spread the word about. The point stated was, as a company that sends emails, your email reputation will be negatively affected by having disposable emails in your email list. This is not true.

Presume your have a website company and you collect email addresses to build out a newsletter to market to your customers. Let's say someone signs up for it with a DEA, for instance, with the email: dea@example.com. For the sake of this example, pretend example.com is a domain that provides disposable email. Now, when you send an email to dea@example.com 6 months later and it bounces (because it's a DEA) this will not affect your reputation at Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc...

Here's why. First of all, example.com (the pretend company here) doesn't send data about whether emails bounced or not to Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail or any other large ESP (Email Service Provider). There's no point. Even if Gmail had a way to for people to provide that sort of information, it would get abused immediately. Think about it, one of your competitors could just tell Gmail that you keep sending them emails that bounce hoping that Gmail will then say you have a bad reputation. It just doesn't work that way. Gmail only cares about providing a good experience to their users. Yahoo! only cares about providing a good experience to their users. Gmail and Yahoo! frankly don't care how deliverability and user experience is at example.com.

When you send emails to your clients and customers, your email reputation at Gmail can be different then your email reputation at Yahoo! which can be different then your email reputation at Hotmail. This is the main point. Each ESP rates your email differently depending on a variety of factors. One factor they do not have insight to and therefore can not judge or take into consideration for is how many emails on your email marketing list belong to DEA providers.

So we repeat, email marketers, rest assured that sending an email to a DEA, like the ones EmailOnDeck provides, will not affect your email reputation.

Be safe out there.