How do you deal with spam blocks?

[JF1980]

Hi, we are increasingly having the problem that when we send out newsletters etc to our 20,000+ members, we are constantly having problems with being blocked from some providers mail servers for supposed spamming etc via automatic 'spam' detectors. :mad: How do you guys deal with this sort of thing?

At the moment I use a program called 1st Bulk EMail Direct Sender to send these newsletters as the list is too large to send via php. Any ideas on different methods available to us?

Many Thanks,

Justin.

[mogster]

If you're sending mail to recipients that have requested you service, you should take all pains to be shure the mail is kosher in respect to:
- being sent from a valid domain, with all dns-stuff correctly set up
- being sent from a valid emailaddress
- having an unsubscribe-link that works ;-)

In addition, you should scrutinize your subject-line. What words does it contain? If your newsletter is about the works and effects of Viagra 😃 , chances are that a subject containing that word will affect the various spamfilters, and not go through to recipient.

Strange problem, this. I'm currently working on a mailinglist (although with only a few hundred subscribers), and I never thought about it this way before.
Has mailinglists become obsolete? :p

knutm :-)

[JF1980]

Well, it's not being sent from a domain as such, as this program I use to send them directly connects to their mail server so not sure how it deals with that, that could cause an issue.

There is no unsubscribe link, members can select not to recieve newsletters in their profile, and the list of members who want to recieve it is extracted from the DB before the mailshot.

The sent from address is [e-mail] which is a black hole, this is to stop us being bombarded with returns and also spam, worms etc. The subject line is simply our website name, okulyillari.com, definatly no viagra mentioned, lol.

SO is there a better program to use to send large numbers of emails? It would be fine if it sent it via our mail server, this would infact maybe sort out some issues!

[piersk]

The anti-spam tool I use checks the domain records and if there's no MX record, it counts it as spam. Also, it checks an open-relay db. If the software you use always uses the same server to send mail from, then chances are that it's been put on a dns blacklist. Then, the only hope is that you persuade the blacklist owner to remove the server, but if loads of spam comes from that server, then chances are it won't be.

[BuzzLY]

"noreply" is sometimes a red flag for spam blockers.

I have a spam blocker in place called Spam Assassin. If you want, send me the exact email you are sending out to your subscribers (from your mailing list tool, so I get all the same headers), and I'll see if it gets blocked. If it does, it will give a score breakdown to tell me exactly why it was blocked. I'll forward that info to you, so you can see what caused the block. Sound cool?

Send the mail to [e-mail]

Make sure that after we do this, you remove me from your list, ok?

Thanks.