ListDefender

Overview

ListDefender keeps your list organized by tagging every contact with one of three tags:

Green (Green (Send Responsibly))

These contacts are safe to email. They are deliverable, engaged and meet your configured email quality checks.
Yellow (Yellow (Re-Engage))

These contacts are deliverable and passed your configured email quality checks, but they do not meet the minimum engagement threshold. You should consider re-engaging them.
Red (Red (Do Not Send))

These contacts are not safe to email. They are either undeliverable, unengaged or failed your configured email quality checks.

When you first register, ListDefender presents a series of options that allow you to fine tune how ListDefender makes this decision. There are three types of details ListDefender considers as part of scanning a contact: Email Validity, Quality and Engagement.

Valid Email Check

ListDefender performs a series of tests to ensure that an email address is deliverable. For most email providers, we can accurately determine if an address is deliverable or if sending mail to it will result in a bounce. If an email address is not deliverable, ListDefender will mark the contact as Red (Red (Do Not Send)). These tests are not configurable, but you can apply a tag that indicates the reason a contact failed the Valid Email Check (See Additional Options.)

Additionally, you can choose to enable the option to opt out contacts that fail the Valid Email Check. When enabled, ListDefender will automatically opt out (in your EMP) contacts that fail the Valid Email Check. These are contacts are not deliverable. We recommend enabling this option.

Email Quality Check

ListDefender has 7 quality tests available. These are:

Disposable Address

ListDefender identifies disposable (temporary) email addresses. Because these addresses expire and are purged after a short time, any email sent to them will likely bounce. Emailing these addresses presents a high risk and provides little to no value as they are consistently low-quality leads.
Vulgar Term

ListDefender detects when a contact's name or email address contains English-language profanity or explicit terms. Contacts flagged by this check are typically considered low-quality and high-risk leads.
Suspicious Term

ListDefender detects suspicious phrases and characters—such as "spam," "do not email" and "RaQcBAOwclAzk"—in a contact's name or email address. Contacts flagged by this check are typically considered low-quality and high-risk leads.
Domain Role

ListDefender detects role-based email addresses, such as billing@ or sales@, that represent a job or team rather than a single person. Targeting these addresses with marketing content carries an elevated risk because they are often shared by multiple users who typically have not explicitly opted in, increasing the chance of spam reports.
Email Tag

ListDefender identifies email addresses that contain a tag (e.g., email+tag@gmail.com). This check is not a strong indicator of risk.
Free Address

ListDefender identifies when an address originates from a free email provider (e.g., Gmail, Hotmail, iCloud). This check is not a strong indicator of risk.
Catch-all Domain

ListDefender can sometimes detect when an address is on a catch-all domain. These domains accept all mail, regardless of the recipient name, using a single fallback address. This check is not a strong indicator of risk and does not confirm the specific email address is the catch-all mailbox.

You can also choose to enable the option to opt out contacts that fail the Email Quality Check. When enabled, ListDefender will automatically opt out (in your EMP) contacts that fail any of the Email Quality Checks that you enable. This option is only recommended after you have a clear understanding of the impact each check has on your list.

Engagement

Using data from your EMP, ListDefender can identify which of your contacts are engaged, un-engaged and those that need you should re-engage. ListDefender exposes some options that let you influence how contacts' engagement is evaluated, including engagement thresholds for engaged and un-engaged. The re-engage thresholds are automatically inferred from the engaged and un-engaged thresholds.

You can also choose to enable the option to opt out contacts that haven't engaged within the number of days you specify for the red engagement threshold. When enabled, ListDefender will automatically opt out (in your EMP) contacts that have not engaged with your emails for the period you configured. This option is only recommended after you have a good understanding of your engagement data.

Additional Options

There are a few additional settings that you can configure to fine-tune how ListDefender works:

Email Field for Checks

Select which of your contact's email fields ListDefender should use in the scan. The most common reason to select a different field is if you're using a third-party service to deliver emails, and your contact's actual email address is in a non-standard field.
Engagement Tracking Method

Your EMP tracks when someone clicks on a link in your emails, and this is a very good way to track customer engagement. Your EMP also tracks when someone opens your emails, but this isn't very reliable because many email systems block or erroneously report opens.
Though the "Clicks Only" option is the most accurate for engagement tracking, ListDefender recommends that you start with "Clicks and Opens" until you have a good understanding of your engagement data.
Engagement Date Storage (last sent, last click and last open)

You can optionally store different engagement metric dates (last sent, last click and last open). The options here may vary, depending on which data is made available by your EMP. These values are updated each time a scan is run.
Automatically Correct Typos

ListDefender detects and corrects typos in email address domains. When automatic fixing is enabled, ListDefender only makes an update if two conditions are met:
1. 1. The original address is non-deliverable.
2. 2. The corrected address is deliverable.
If the original address is already deliverable, ListDefender leaves it unchanged.
Tag contacts with the reason they failed the Valid Email Check

ListDefender does a series of checks to determine if an email address is valid. When enabled, ListDefender will apply a tag for the specific reason that a contact failed the Valid Email Check.
Tag contacts for each Email Quality Check they fail

ListDefender performs a comprehensive series of Email Quality Checks. When this feature is enabled, ListDefender will automatically apply a tag to a contact for each quality check they fail, making it easy to see exactly why a lead is low-quality.
Tag contacts based on the Email Address Provider

ListDefender identifies the email provider for each contact, and can tag the contact as one of the four major providers (Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Yahoo). Any address not hosted by these services will be tagged as "Other Email Provider," offering quick insight into your list's composition.