Email deliverability for dropshippers
Where the addresses come from
- Checkout from paid social traffic, which converts impulsively and produces more typos than a considered purchase.
- Discount popups on cold traffic, the highest-bounce signup source in the whole category.
- Abandoned cart capture from visitors who never bought anything.
- Lists carried over from a previous store on a different domain.
A brand new domain has no credit
A domain registered last month has no sending history, and mailbox providers treat unfamiliar senders with suspicion by default. There is no reservoir of goodwill to absorb a bad first campaign.
The business model pushes against that. Test a product, scale the winner, send at once. Volume arrives before reputation is built, which is precisely the pattern that looks like a compromised account.
Carrying a list from a previous store makes it worse: a new domain, no history, and addresses collected under a different brand that recipients do not recognize.
What the results tend to look like
Consumer-heavy with a high share of throwaway and disposable addresses, because impulse purchases and discount popups attract them. Disposable domains are detectable by list lookup, which makes that share unusually easy to remove cleanly.
What to do about it
Warm the domain before you need it
Two to four weeks of small, engaged sending before any campaign volume. There is no way to shortcut this and no service that convincingly replaces it.
Remove disposable addresses at capture
They are detectable by list lookup rather than by probing, which makes them one of the cheapest and most solid filters available.
Do not carry a list to a new brand
Recipients who signed up for a different store do not recognize the new name, and an unrecognised sender gets reported rather than unsubscribed.
Require confirmation before releasing a discount code
Popup-on-cold-traffic is the highest-bounce source in this category and a confirmation step removes most of it.
Questions people ask
Why does a new domain get filtered so heavily?
Because it has no sending history and providers default to suspicion. Reputation is built over weeks of consistent behavior, and volume arriving before that looks like a compromised account.
Can I use a list from my previous store?
Legally it depends on what people consented to. Practically it performs badly, because recipients do not recognize the new brand and report the mail rather than unsubscribing.
Are disposable addresses worth removing?
Yes, and they are among the easiest things to remove, because disposable domains are identified by list lookup rather than by probing a server.
Related sectors
See the breakdown on your own list
100 free checks a month, no card. Addresses we could not get an answer on come back labeled rather than guessed at, and we do not bill them.