Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Hi,

the simple answer is that your server (or your isp's server) is on some blacklists. You could try using a new email server but in the long run, i suggest that you use whitelist services and/or email accreditation(reputation) services.

one of my clients has been using https://www.isipp.com/ for some time, it seems really good.

good luck,
Jim

luvbugbhupi,

This is a very common problem, in which email marketers must remain constantly on guard.

Here are a couple of thoughts, based on how you described your problem:

SPAM / Junk Filter - they trigger off certain words that are in your title or within the first 500 or so characters in the email. The fact that is it HTML vs text may also increase the SPAM calculation if you are not careful in how you create the email. The use of hidden text, or forms in the HTML will almost always trigger a spam counter to increase. When you reach a certain threshold you will me marked as junk or spam. Depending hon the user's email account settings, your mail will be redirected tot he junk folder or simply deleted.

Blacklisted - I don't think this is the problem. You mentioned that you have received the emails in your inbox and junk. If you ISP were blacklisted it would not make it through.

Suggestion: get your subscribers to add your sending email address to their 'allowed sender' list with their email tool or service.

In general, understanding how spam is calculated as a systematic or programmed process will help you design emails to avoid traps.

Everyone is always trying to get higher open rates, and this is one area people are always trying to get around. The makers of these spam checking tools know this and are always trying to improve their detection models. So testing your mail is critical to ensure strong open rates.

Hope that helps,

I agree with everything said, and althought there is talk of whitelists, I've yet to see evidence that one exists.

First ensure that your email is SPAM free, put it through a spam checker (i.e. https://spamcheck.sitesell.com).

You also might need to throttleback of your emails if your sending thousands. I think both AOL and Hotmail stop emails when it sees over 3k coming from one address, it makes the assumption that its SPAM.

Its worth working with a email partner, someone who talks on a regular basis to ISPs to find out their latest do's and don'ts.

Good Luck

Hotmail is one giant pain in the butt now...if you are not in the 'friends' list, odds are, you are pooched. I'm advising all my clients to drop any email address with hotmail in it because their filtering rules make sending email almost impossible.

Check the words you are using. Words like FREE in the subject line or somewhere in the body of th message may get your message turfed. Same with excessive caps, excessive exclamation marks. It could be your IP address (someone else on a shared box abusing a mail server)..or thousands of other reasons. Do a google search on the subject of filtering spam...and read, read, read...there is so many ways to filter now...its making it tough to work within the rules.

Darcy Moen
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