We offer all of our law firm clients a private IP address for their email accounts. Many prospective clients ask why they should pay a bit more per month for a unique IP address for their mass email communications (e.g., newsletters, alerts).
We recently saw an analogy offered by Return Path (a leading email deliverability company) that we think hits the nail on the head. It is that an IP address is like a social security number. If you shared the same social security number with many other individuals, then their credit choices - e.g., how much they spend, whether they pay their bills on time, etc. - would affect your own credit score (since you're all sharing the same social security number). In fact, your own credit habits could be impeccable, but if one or more of the individuals sharing your social security number engaged in poor credit practices (e.g., regularly making late payments), your own credit score would be negatively affected. Imagine applying for a mortgage in New York City and then being told that sorry, you don't qualify because John Doe in Topeka hasn't been paying his bills on time!
It's pretty much the same thing with IP addresses. If you share an IP address with many other accounts (like at the cheap email blast services), then your email reputation will be affected by the practices of the other accounts. You may adhere to "best practices," but if their emails generate too many complaints, your own reputation (and the deliverability of your emails) will be adversely affected (because you're all sharing an IP address, which mail servers examine when determining whether to deliver an email).
But if a law firm has its own private IP address, then your email marketing reputation is in your own hands, and your hands alone. Just like your credit score is -- because you have your very own social security number.
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