Forum Moderators: DixonJones
Though many users do receive my emails. Some hotmail users swear my emails are not in their spam box and they receive other emails. I send some 200 or 300 daily since we have good volume I use preformated emails in response (what includes some jpg images) I guess sometimes are filtered as spam
So I need a way to be 100% sure about what really happened with my sent emails (buy some kind of certificate or signature may help?) or perhaps a software or service to track emails?
And also want to know what to do to ensure my emails reach inbox in hotmail cases (those are 95% of people complaining they don't receive my emails though I know some hotmail users do because they reply...)
If you are sending 200-300 a day then there are bound to be some "signatures" that may trip some spam filters.
The way to KNOW they have arrived is to use a single pixel in the email which lies on your sever, so that when the email is opens, it calls the server... but this technique has been more or less disrupted by modern email software.
The way to guarantee emails get to Hotmail users is not very helpful... you buy maildrops from MSN... which probably isn't what you want anyway as these come in the millions and still get ignored.
Now - here are some ideas for improving your delivery rate:
1. Make it text only. Don't use HTML and especially do not use pictures
2. Do not make it wordy or salesy. If it is a receipt or a password, make that the only thing that email tries to achieve.
3. The Title of the email MUST help the user realize it is not spam, but something they asked for. (If they didn't ask for it, then you can't expect more than a cursory open rate anyway)
4. The "reply to" address should ideally match the "from" address. It also needs to work! You will find that most of your non-deliveries will bounce back to the reply-to address. So if you want to know where your problems are, you need to read your bounce messages.
There are people working on sorting out this nightmare of being able to verify the sender of and email. At least one also has a deal with AOL and Yahoo, but I am not so sure about Hotmail, so you'll need to track them down... although you end up paying to send the emails.
Those are my thoughts.
About sending text only messages, unfortunatelly I can't, I MUST send photos and explain a method due nature of expected answer (in travel sector) so really can't send text only emails.
Is it the same to leave the reply to field empty, than manually entering same address as from field? ( I noticed I have it empty in all my accounts)
