Hotmail's pdf on deliverability issues: http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/3/3/e3397e7c-17a6-497d-9693-78f80be272fb/enhance_deliver.pdf
Microsoft list of helpful email addresses and some they recommend:
http://www.microsoft.com/senderid
http://postmaster.live.com
http://microsoft.com/postmaster
http://postmaster.live.com/guidelines.aspx
http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/anti-spam.aspx
http://microsoft.com/safety
FTC GUIDELINES FOR BUSINESSES : http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/business.htm
AUTHENTICATTION AND ONLINE TRUST ALLIANCE (AOTA) www.aotalliance.org
DELIVERABILITY http://www.deliverability.com/
ESPC http://www.espcoalition.org
SENDER SCORE CERTIFIED PROGRAM http://www.senderscorecertified.com
CAN SPAM ACT info http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm
Enroll in Microsofts Junk Mail Reporting Scheme http://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#JMRPP
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
ISP's blocking legitimate email
What a challenge. A brand new business web site that generates automated emails to the friends and family of registered users. We did it all properly. All was validated all was on a fixed safe server but so many users werent getting our emails - or if they did arrive they were flagged with red danger signs in Hotmail, AOL didnt deliver them to any box either In or Junk and the others were all a bit hit and miss. We paid out hundreds of dollars in advice, spent weeks searching the internet for solutions some of which wanted to charge us £17,000 upwards for an analysis of our sending history. However, we didnt have a sending history - we just wanted our email to go into the right boxes - otherwise we didnt have a business. Scary!
We are now a long way to solving this problem and we want to help other legitimate businesses to solve it without the pain and expenses that we have gone through.
Importantly - we must stress we are not an email marketeer and our problems are not about bulk sending of mail to many recipients. For that you have to pay money and our advice is not relevant to that side of emailing. We are just able to help with your outgoing email from a server on a one to one basis.
Firstly you need to examine your emails. Plain text is the way forward, forget html as it creates too many problems and most users get a pretty poor view of these now adays as all the images are blocked so if it does turn up it simply looks a mess. We looked at Facebook - and they send plain text messages. So if it works for them .....
Secondly look at your content - simple words like "free" and "unlimited" or words that cannot be deciphered by an ISP because you have bunched them together or a million other obvious words will be treated as SPAM. Each one scores a point and if your content scores more than five points you will be treated as SPAM. Run your content through a checker - we used Spam Assassin - its free and its in wide use. Spam Assassin will analyse your content - we worked through them until our emails all scored zero - but we had to change all our content in order to achieve that.
You will need to examine each ISP's email protocol and enroll on their SDNS or Sender ID program . You can download free an ESPC Email Authentication Report which gives a list of the primary ISP's and their preferred protocol for accepting emails. Then work with the ISP to register your IP Address - lots of form filling but easily completed if you know all there is to know about your server - our web developer did most of these because she had all the info at her fingertips. Importantly, we had to register with the ISP's a number of times - dont assume one form will fix it - you'll have to keep on doing the same thing. Always looking for a reply or an acknowledgement or better still for improvement in deliverability.
You do not need to spend money with the Email Authentication companies - thats important they cant help you because they only handle bulk email senders - and that's quite different. We were amazed at how hopeless the service was so please dont spend any money with them.
Add to the bottom of ALL your emails going out from your fixed IP Address your company details, address and contact details. Registered Address and Company Registration Numbers. Dont go overboard though - because spammers are always looking to prove authenticity - so just put in the basics.
Make sure the address sending the email is an actual address and CAN receive replies - do not use "No Reply" even if you could reply to it - this is immediately seen as dodgy. Make sure its something like Support@ or Info@ or even a name@.
Make Sure the heading is personalized where possible and the name of the recipient is included in the body copy - this can be automated with opt in information or information given by users. Its important and you should try to find a way to do this.
Put on your emails - Company X is committed to best email practices. Provide simple one step opt out facilities on ALL outgoing emails. Make sure it works.
Publish a privacy policy and terms and conditions - you will be asked to provide links to these with the ISP's who are endeavouring to establishing your professionalism and that you are genuine.
Develop a policy for dealing with bounce backs. They fall into two categories hard and soft. Make sure you are able to delete hard bounces immediately from your database. Soft bounces can be allowed twice before deletion. Ensure removal can be done instantly - you will have to find a way to monitor this. We do it at abuse@.
You will need to monitor FPL feedback from the I SP's and you need to set this up - although we havent found this to work properly for us - but its seen as important. In theory its meant to tell you when emails have not got through the ISP and to give you information as to why. We have set this up but havent had consistent feed back via FPL - but do it anyway, and we live in hope that it will kick in at some point.
Now the techie bit I cant give you but I am going to ask Kelly to fill in the gaps and post her Technical Summary here in the next post. Hopefully the information above will keep you busy or a while anyway. Any questions contact us through Much Loved People and we'll do our best to help, but no promises as we dont have ALL the answers
We are now a long way to solving this problem and we want to help other legitimate businesses to solve it without the pain and expenses that we have gone through.
Importantly - we must stress we are not an email marketeer and our problems are not about bulk sending of mail to many recipients. For that you have to pay money and our advice is not relevant to that side of emailing. We are just able to help with your outgoing email from a server on a one to one basis.
Firstly you need to examine your emails. Plain text is the way forward, forget html as it creates too many problems and most users get a pretty poor view of these now adays as all the images are blocked so if it does turn up it simply looks a mess. We looked at Facebook - and they send plain text messages. So if it works for them .....
Secondly look at your content - simple words like "free" and "unlimited" or words that cannot be deciphered by an ISP because you have bunched them together or a million other obvious words will be treated as SPAM. Each one scores a point and if your content scores more than five points you will be treated as SPAM. Run your content through a checker - we used Spam Assassin - its free and its in wide use. Spam Assassin will analyse your content - we worked through them until our emails all scored zero - but we had to change all our content in order to achieve that.
You will need to examine each ISP's email protocol and enroll on their SDNS or Sender ID program . You can download free an ESPC Email Authentication Report which gives a list of the primary ISP's and their preferred protocol for accepting emails. Then work with the ISP to register your IP Address - lots of form filling but easily completed if you know all there is to know about your server - our web developer did most of these because she had all the info at her fingertips. Importantly, we had to register with the ISP's a number of times - dont assume one form will fix it - you'll have to keep on doing the same thing. Always looking for a reply or an acknowledgement or better still for improvement in deliverability.
You do not need to spend money with the Email Authentication companies - thats important they cant help you because they only handle bulk email senders - and that's quite different. We were amazed at how hopeless the service was so please dont spend any money with them.
Add to the bottom of ALL your emails going out from your fixed IP Address your company details, address and contact details. Registered Address and Company Registration Numbers. Dont go overboard though - because spammers are always looking to prove authenticity - so just put in the basics.
Make sure the address sending the email is an actual address and CAN receive replies - do not use "No Reply" even if you could reply to it - this is immediately seen as dodgy. Make sure its something like Support@ or Info@ or even a name@.
Make Sure the heading is personalized where possible and the name of the recipient is included in the body copy - this can be automated with opt in information or information given by users. Its important and you should try to find a way to do this.
Put on your emails - Company X is committed to best email practices. Provide simple one step opt out facilities on ALL outgoing emails. Make sure it works.
Publish a privacy policy and terms and conditions - you will be asked to provide links to these with the ISP's who are endeavouring to establishing your professionalism and that you are genuine.
Develop a policy for dealing with bounce backs. They fall into two categories hard and soft. Make sure you are able to delete hard bounces immediately from your database. Soft bounces can be allowed twice before deletion. Ensure removal can be done instantly - you will have to find a way to monitor this. We do it at abuse@.
You will need to monitor FPL feedback from the I SP's and you need to set this up - although we havent found this to work properly for us - but its seen as important. In theory its meant to tell you when emails have not got through the ISP and to give you information as to why. We have set this up but havent had consistent feed back via FPL - but do it anyway, and we live in hope that it will kick in at some point.
Now the techie bit I cant give you but I am going to ask Kelly to fill in the gaps and post her Technical Summary here in the next post. Hopefully the information above will keep you busy or a while anyway. Any questions contact us through Much Loved People and we'll do our best to help, but no promises as we dont have ALL the answers
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Booted out by Surety Mail
We asked too many questions about our emails and they didnt like it. We were given our money back without even asking! Bet that doesnt happen too many times in business. However, we now have a new lease of life and are making more progress ourselves in a single day that Surety did in 6 weeks for us.
We now have some answers about how to get your email delivered and we want to share these with others who have the same problem.
We now have some answers about how to get your email delivered and we want to share these with others who have the same problem.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Environmentally Friendly Christmas and Birthday iCards
Our go live is going to be towards the end of November - not sure of the EXACT date at this point. But we will have some gorgeous iCards for Christmas. these can be created on a one to one basis or on a one to many basis - meaning a great environmentally solution to sending Christmas Cards - its free and its GREEN.
Send to the people you work with, go to school with or to all your acquaintances. Make them feel much loved - and save yourself a fortune.
Here is one of our birthday iTemplates all of which can be seen on http://www.muchlovedpeople.com/
Trials and Tribulations of a New Internet Business
Much Loved People is a social networking website for people to send online communications to their family, friends and colleagues. Its a simple idea - I believe they are best - but who would have thought we could encounter so many problems.
Our biggest problem is the ISP's deciding they dont know us and therefore they will treat us as SPAM. Aaaaaggghhhh.
We are all about getting our emails delivered - in fact we dont have a business unless we combat this - I have spent weeks on the problem and have now subscribed to a company that allegedly authenticates outbound email and for this priviledge so far I have parted with $700 and will continue to part with $200 a month. the result of this investment? A decrease in getting my email into the in boxes of Yahoo!!!
Its a nightmare. We have followed all the email protocols we can find, invested this money and yet our emails do not arrive with AOL at all and have now been thrown into the Junk box of Yahoo. However, we are now being delivered to the Hotmail in boxes - so thats a result.
We will be properly live at the end of November - in time for Christmas - and now I need to look at SEO and establishing links with like minded websites. The work is never ending but its fun to learn new things. If anyone has any info they would like to share - please do! www.muchlovedpeople.com our contact info is there.
Our biggest problem is the ISP's deciding they dont know us and therefore they will treat us as SPAM. Aaaaaggghhhh.
We are all about getting our emails delivered - in fact we dont have a business unless we combat this - I have spent weeks on the problem and have now subscribed to a company that allegedly authenticates outbound email and for this priviledge so far I have parted with $700 and will continue to part with $200 a month. the result of this investment? A decrease in getting my email into the in boxes of Yahoo!!!
Its a nightmare. We have followed all the email protocols we can find, invested this money and yet our emails do not arrive with AOL at all and have now been thrown into the Junk box of Yahoo. However, we are now being delivered to the Hotmail in boxes - so thats a result.
We will be properly live at the end of November - in time for Christmas - and now I need to look at SEO and establishing links with like minded websites. The work is never ending but its fun to learn new things. If anyone has any info they would like to share - please do! www.muchlovedpeople.com our contact info is there.
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