[thelist] Avoiding the junk folder

[Volkan Özçelik]

Hi,


> That said, consider setting up SPF records in the DNS to state that the
> particular host in question is allowed to send mail for your domain.
>

Also you may want to cosider using domainkeys [1].

Besides, keep in mind that (as far as our tests are concerned for a client
who sends around 2 million e-mails per week) Yahoo! is extremely strict in
bulk mail policies.

Be sure to have a look at Yahoo!'s best practices [3] in sending e-mail.

In certain cases, you may happen to find a legitimate, properly double opted
in e-mail in your junk mail folder, especially if the mail filtering
algorithm does not properly understand the content of the message (the
newsletters that the company I mentioned has sent were in Turkish and not
only newsletters but also system messages (like username/password change
requests, help tickets etc.) were going right into the junk folder)

I'm talking about nearly 250,000 e-mails (of 2 million) per week going right
into Yahoo!'s junk folder!
Needless to say, it was quite a stressful week for me as the CTO of the
company.

If that's your case:

1. Fill and submit yahoo bulk sender form. [2]
2. Try to contact an insider (optional, but ensures your authenticity and
speeds up the process)

After following those steps, our bulk mail issue had been resolved.

...


I'd like to share some (unverified but working none the less) test results
for other clients as well:

1. Yahoo! Mail prefers a well-formatted HTML e-mail to HTML messages with
non-standard or deprecated HTML markup.

2. Hotmail prefers M$-outlook like messages, full of deprecated markup (lots
of spans, font tags etc, m$-specific inline attributes etc. etc...).
Sending plain text test messages AND sending well-formatted XHTML messages
went right into Junk folder in hotmail;
while sending the same message by
- composing it in MS outlook,
- copying the textual representation (along with MS-specific mail headers)
- pasting the text and headers to a PHP file
- and sending via PHP mailer
went to the inbox of our Hotmail test accounts.

3. Some e-mail clients prefer text-based e-mail messags to HTML e-mail
messages.

4. Some e-mail clients do the opposite (i.e. text-based messages may go into
junk folder)

In short;

1. Learn and use best practices in sending bulk e-mail.
2. Be sure to test your e-mail with major e-mail providers that your target
audience use.
3. Contact those e-mail provides if you are sure that you send legitimate
e-mails and your mails are not going to the inbox even so.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys
[2] http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/bulk.html
[3] http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/postmaster-15.html

Hope that helps,
-- 
Volkan Ozcelik
+> linkibol.com - in seek for quality links : http://www.linkibol.com/
+> My projects/studies/trials/errors : http://www.sarmal.com/
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