What is SMTP and how can it affect my email deliveries: a quick guide
Do you know what SMTP is and how it affects your email deliveries? This protocol is responsible for transmitting an email from one inbox to What is SMTP another. Therefore, it is essential for email to work and not be left in digital limbo. Something like the postman when you send a letter by post.
The SMTP server can be used by all email clients, including desktop applications. However, the challenge is to find an SMTP that offers a good quality service. The main reason? One of the main handicaps of this protocol when using clients such as Gmail or Yahoo is that communications run the risk of being identified as phishing or SPAM , negatively affecting deliverability.
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What is SMTP specifically?
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and defines a communication protocol that is responsible for sending messages between servers. Simply put, the SMTP protocol is part of the entire email exchange process. It is responsible for transferring emails from one device to another.
In fact, without this standard protocol, it would not be possible to send emails. You might think that when you send an email, it goes directly to the recipient’s inbox. But the reality is that, in between, a whole complex process of communication takes place over the Internet that allows its delivery. And it goes further, since without this protocol, it would not be possible to send attached data : images, documents or videos.
Broadly speaking, to understand what SMTP is, it is important to clarify that it has two main functions:
- Check the settings and issue permissions to the device you are sending an email to.
- Send the message to the specified address and confirm whether the email has been sent successfully. If the email cannot be delivered australia phone number data to the recipient, notify the sender of the error.
How does an SMTP mail relay work?
It is not only important to understand what how to add a hotel room booking form in wordpress SMTP is, but also to understand how it works. When sending an email, the sender’s SMTP server connects to the recipient’s SMTP server.
And this connection is made up of a series of common rules that must be followed in a strict order for communication to be possible. Without ireland lists this standard, both servers (sender and recipient) would not understand each other; it would be as if they spoke two different languages.
Most of that communication is invisible. But what is actually happening is an exchange of commands forming an SMTP session. There are three commands required for the process to be completely successful:
- The sender’s address.
- The recipient’s address.
- Sending the message: text or files.
These three are mandatory conditions for sending any email. All emails sent use the SMTP protocol, as it is a standard and very simple. But it is precisely this last feature that puts the deliverability of the newsletters you want to send at the greatest risk.
Which SMTP to choose?
When considering the use of an SMTP server, it is essential to choose one that offers a good quality service. It is important to ensure that transactional emails reach customers without problems. And not only that they are delivered, but that the delivery times are fast and that they can be carried out in bulk.
Remember that transactional emails must always reach subscribers or potential customers. Otherwise, you may face complaints and claims, especially if they are payment confirmations for your online store or other important transactions.
Free SMTP provider
SMTP servers of free email providers are based on unmonitored IPs . What does this mean? It means that when you send an email you may be sharing your IP with others. Also, you can’t know who you share it with, and this is a risk for the reputation of the email.
You may share it with companies that send SPAM and this influences the deliberation of messages that can be interpreted as spam . It is clear that this is an unfavorable situation, especially for servers that have configured the sending of transactional messages natively. These include CMS, ERP and CRM.
The importance of knowing what the term means and how it works lies in choosing a server that offers higher quality and security in sending. Using a free or poor server also affects the image you convey as a brand; you could offer a bad user experience and lose conversion and loyalty opportunities. Because, in addition, free SMTP servers have another series of important limitations that you should always keep in mind:
- Multiple connections are not allowed to ensure faster browsing speed for users.
- Bandwidth is limited to avoid overloading of sent and received messages.
External SMTP server
Choosing a qualified SMTP server is one of the best decisions you can make to achieve success with your email marketing strategy . Companies that offer mass email sending services offer SMTP servers with greater guarantees and interesting features.
In addition, they are usually very simple to maintain, allowing you to save time and resources, which allows you to focus on other aspects. And, as one of the functionalities they usually have is statistics, it will allow you to more thoroughly monitor your email marketing campaigns and the objectives you have previously set.
And saving time also has an impact on how you spend it; you can dedicate yourself to working on your email marketing strategies, your content or to better developing your subscriber list while forgetting about the more technical aspect of sending emails.
How SMPT affects email deliveries
Now that we have understood what it is and how it works, it is time to talk about how this protocol affects email sending and marketing campaigns. There are many issues that can be affected depending on the quality of the SMTP server you work with.
1.- Improves shipping speed
The primary purpose of an SMTP server is to send and control the mail that is sent. By using an SMTP server that is 100% dedicated to transactional mailings, you increase the speed of delivery. A hosting provider or a free manager do not allow multiple sessions and will therefore take longer to deliver communications.
However, opting for a high-quality SMTP server will ensure that you can quickly send a large volume of emails simultaneously. This way, you can avoid server restrictions.
2.- It has greater deliverability
Deliverability is one of the most important factors when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Especially those transactional emails that companies send to their customer lists. On a standard SMTP server, delivery is not entirely guaranteed. In fact, the sender’s reputation may be at stake.
This is because the connection is shared with other senders, some of whom may be spammers , and in this regard, the SMTP server makes no distinction. If you want to have greater security in your email messages and significantly increase delivery to recipients, the ideal is to use an external SMTP server that offers all the guarantees.
3.- Allows the automation of tasks
Making clear what these acronyms consist of and how they work also means clarifying in a simple way that this protocol allows the automation of tasks. This is of great relevance when it comes to email marketing strategies, since an important part of how they work is automation.
Automating email sending saves you a lot of time, since otherwise you would have to perform certain tasks manually. In addition, these servers manage unsubscriptions and bounces automatically. They even relate this request to other external databases or applications that you use.
And what’s more interesting: when a recipient checks the spam box, you can schedule an automatic unsubscribe from the subscriber list . This will prevent your reputation from being negatively affected if you keep sending messages to a user’s SPAM box.