Avoiding email being marked as spam

Hi all,

I am planning to send the users of my web site e-mails when the accounts are created, to keep them informed or when they have done som actions, or created/updated info.

I want to avoid the emails sent coulddbeing marked as spam. Is there something I should keep in mind in order to avoid this possible inconvenient.

Thanks for all your ideas...

Leo.

 

I'd probably recommend to make sure you're sending email through your SMTP server, to make sure it has less chances of getting marked as spam. Other than that, I believe that you have to take into account people marking your domain as spam, as this usually alerts email providers that your domain should be flagged as spam.

 

In addition to the things Tam suggested, you will want to look at the message subject and body to make sure they don't come across as "spammy." Automated emails often fall victim to spam traps simply because they are generic by necessity or contain URLs, etc.

Having said that, remember that every recipient mail server is different, and their criteria for what is junk or spam is difficult to determine. You might find that your message is successfully received by some users and not others. There is a limit to how much control you have over whether your messages are flagged.

 

I hope I am not thread-stealing, but this is a discussion I would like to continue. We just changed over to DiscountASP's Email on the 18th which was a Friday. We have some code that sends out automated email. The following Monday morning the email Subject was preceeded with a SPAM-LOW: tag. How can this be omitted?

 

Also bear in mind that the SPAM-LOW tag is not on the outgoing messages. SmarterMail adds that to incoming messages.

 

Okay, I tried this and will mark the thread resolved tomorrow if it indeed worked. Thanks.

But if you reply to the message that has the SPAM-LOW tag added, then it's on the reply? Or not?

 

Yes, once the tag is added to the subject it will stay in the subject, unless you remove it when you reply or forward the message.

 

I realized this is not my thread to mark resolved, but I am all set. Thank you for your help.

 

Sending email now marked as spam low

I am having a similar problem. I send email from my website to persons who visit and I use the email server provided by discountasp.

Now those emails are marked 'spam low' when they come to me at my discoundasp email [when I visit my website as a customer] , so I assume they are also being marked as such for my customers.

I removed greylisting and this solved the problem for me, as a customer of myself, however, does that mean other customers who use greylisting will receive the spam flag? Does this mean that my email account with discountasp does not have an ip that one who has greylisting 'on' can verify against?

 

spam low correction - greylisting.

removing greylisting did NOT solve the SPAM:LOW problem. I will try the other suggestions.

Thanks

BK

 

Solved based on suggestions. Thanks.

I removed the web link url address from the automated email sent out from our web site and the SPAM message disappeared on the receiving end.
Thanks for the tip to check this.
BK

 

Glad it worked. Sometimes it's the simple things...

 

Lower spam score

There are a few web sites that discuss ways to lower your SpamAssassin score and these probably are relevant to other spam filters, too. Here's one place to look:
http://www.andreas-kraus.net/blog/tips-for-avoiding-spam-filters-with-systemnetmail/

This one emphasizes that you should include both a plain text and an html view of any message (as opposed to html only). Anyone know of other techniques for keeping email legitimate-looking?

Incidentally, you can always experiment. Send yourself some emails with various "spammy" features and then check the headers after the email arrives. They usually provide some details on the spam score.

I must emphasize that I am interested in this issue because spam filters have become notoriously over-zealous and frequently trash legitimate emails along with actual spam. I'm only interested in finding ways to ensure that legitimate emails are not erroneously tagged as spam.