Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Whitelist Procedures

Yahoo

mail-abuse-bulk@cc.yahoo-inc.com

1. IMPORTANT: This email MUST BE in PLAIN TEXT only. NO HTML or anything alike.

2. Send email to the above address from your formal website/organization/company address, preferrably the a domain that uses your mail server. For example if you run a server named mail.yourcompany.com, then send from something like admin@yourcompany.com
3. Make sure that this email itself reflects a good demonstration of your mail server setup. (as stated above clean IP, reverse dns, SPF, domainkey if possible)

4. The subject of the email should be something like this: " Request To Accept Emails From My Mail Server Into Yahoo User's Inbox". Or "Request To Prevent My Emails From Being Delivered To Yahoo Bulk Mail Folder"
(For some reason titles like this work better than "request to whitelist my server IP". To prevent the emails from being treated as "bulk email", Yahoo will whitelist your IP and your "deferred" problem will also go away")

5. The first paragraph of your email body is a very brief self introduction like this:

Hello,

I am the mail server administrator of [your company/website].
This email is to kindly request that emails sent from my mail servers to be delivered properly into Yahoo user's inboxes. My mail servers are not involved in any spam activity. They have proper reverse DNS, SPF, and DomainKey records set up.
Below you'll find my answers to your questionnaire. If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to conact me at [your email address]

Please note the domainkey I mentioned in my earlier text. If you have it set up, mention it asap to prove that your mail servers are in full accordance with Yahoo's policy.

6. Here comes the long and boring part. The rest of your email is your answer to Yahoo's 17-question mail server admin's questionnaire. You need to answer each and every one of them briefly and precisely, to the best of your effort.
Plesae note that since you are not allowed to use HTML, make sure you format your text in a way that is very easy to read. For example, separate each question into deviders like this:
*****************************************************************************

*****************************************************************************




1. Do you rent, lease, buy or otherwise obtain email lists from
companies, individuals, organizations, or websites (other than those you
own) that do not indicate that the customer will be subscribed to this
specific email list?

a. If yes, do you explicitly send an opt-in confirmation email to the
email addresses you have acquired?
i. If yes, please send a text-only example of this email.

b. If no, please explain how you obtain email addresses.

2. How do you verify that the true owner of the email address you have
obtained is valid?

3. Do you offer list management services for other companies (i.e., as
an ASP)? If so, please provide us with your standards for accepting your
clients' email lists.

4. Do you rent, lease, sell, or otherwise give email lists to other
companies, individuals, organizations, or affiliates without providing
notice to the email users that they will be subscribed to the buyer's
specific email list?

5. Please indicate the information below pertaining to email sent to
Yahoo! mail.

a. How frequently do you send email to Yahoo! users in a given month
and how many emails are sent in the average mailing?

b. If you send email to multiple addresses, how many addresses are
sent to, for an average mailing?

c. If you are an ASP, what has your average client mailing frequency
been over the past six months?

d. Are you emails informational and subscriber based (newsletters)?

e. Are your emails for marketing to other than existing customers?

6. Please specify your policies pertaining to both soft (4xx) and hard
(5xx) SMTP response codes or bounce messages.

a. Do you remove email addresses from your mail server or list if
emails to them bounce?
Soft:
Hard:

b. How many bounced emails are required before you consider an email
address to be inactive and subject to removal from your list?
Soft:
Hard:

i. After an email address reaches your bounce limit, how long
(i.e., minutes, hours, etc.) does it typically take to remove the email
address from your list?
Soft:
Hard:

c. Are there any circumstances under which you ignore the standard
definitions (4xx) being temporary and (5xx) being permanent, and instead
apply your own non standard interpretation? If so, when/what/how?

7. If a user requests removal from your email list, how long (i.e.,
minutes, hours, etc.) does it typically take to remove the email
address?
When user clicks an unsubscribe link (if applicable):
When user requests removal:
Other:

8. If a user is removed from your email list, what happens to that email
address in your database?

9. Please copy and paste a text-only example of a recent mailing, having
the delivery issue, including full Internet headers. Include the entire
error message if email is being returned or undeliverable.

Within a Yahoo! Mail account, you can display this information by
clicking the "Full Headers" link located within the message in the
bottom right-hand corner.

10. Please provide all of the active email IP address(es) and domain
names you are currently using to send your mailings including notes with
regards to dedicated or shared status for each. We do request email
administrators to describe which of their clients corresponds to each IP
address. Please submit this information in the following format:

IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Mail Server Domain Name: server_name.domain.com
Notes: dedicated IP, domain/list server

At this time we can only consider active and correctly configured mail
servers/IPs for possible addition to the whitelist.

11. Are these IP addresses dedicated solely for your company's mailings?
If not, please specify which IP addresses of your email servers are used
only by your organization. Please use the following format:

IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Mail Server Domain Name: server_name.domain.com
Notes: billing, employee newsletter, company in-house information
only

12. Are you planning on utilizing DomainKeys
(https://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys) to authenticate your mailings?
If so, when do you plan to fully implement and use DomainKeys?

13. Please provide the "From" address(es) in the mailings you send.

14. Please provide the URL of your web site.

15. Please provide the URL of your Privacy Policy and other relevant
policies.

16. Please provide the URL of the site at which users opt-in to receive
your mailings.

17. Finally, please provide the following contact information:
Company name:
Postal Address
Street:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Country:
Key contacts
Name:
Title:
Email address:
Phone number:
Contact email address for important service announcements:




7. Whew it's long isn't it. But you'll have to make Yahoo happy. =P. So think carefully when you answer each question. Think about the kind of answer that Yahoo want's to hear. This is not to tell you to lie, but you know what I mean.
Note that Yahoo keeps asking about your "mail list". If you do not even have a email list (like some email news letter ), you can explictly tell Yahoo so. You can tell them that your emails are sent only for essential communications such as a web site membership/billing/business related etc. Obviously, if you can answer "Yes, I've already utilized domainkey on my server. You may check my domain DNS record or this email itself for proof" to question number 12 " Are you planning on utilizing DomainKeys" you'll be at an advantage.

Question 10 is where you list all your mail server IPs that you wish to be white listed.
Question 9 is where you should copy and paste (including full headers) a sample email that got deferred by Yahoo. Make sure the content of this email is not advertising related. =)

That's about it. The only thing you can do next is to wait and pray. If Yahoo likes you, you may receive a response in a few business days like this:



Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail. We appreciate your responses to
the questionnaire.

While we cannot fully exempt your mail server from our SpamGuard
technology, we have made appropriate changes to your mail server's IP
addresses in our database.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,


Of course there is no guarantee that you'll succeed when dealing with such a gigantic operation. Think about how many emails Yahoo has to handle every day. But if you follow these instructions carefully your chances at being accepted should be better.

Hope this post helps. Good luck!