Dealing with activation emails sent getting in customer's spam folder

[brakkar]

Hi,
I sell a software over the web. Once I get a purchase notification, I send manually to the client his license code via email.

So the emails I sent are the same, except license code that changes.

Unfortunately, 30% (and growing) of the emails I send end up in customer's spam folders.It results in angry email from customer that think I didn't sent the code.

I used to send this with my business domain as email address, and gmail smtp. I tried to use my business domain's smtp, but it was even worse: more email got labeled as spam.

Is there a way to avoid this issue ?

(For the moment, I CAN'T setup a system where customer would get his code on the web page of purchase confirmation - i still need to send emails with code)

[Staffa]

You seem to have a purchase confirmation page, have you thought about including a message to customers to check their spam inbox for you license code email just in case it ends up there ?

[rocknbil]

Honestly, I still haven't gotten a complete handle on 100% positive delivery.

It helps to make sure the email has appropriate headers, that your SPF records are properly set up. There are services on the web to "spam check" an email, locate a couple of them, paste the entire email with headers into the checker, see if it gives you a green light.

Make sure your mail server is not on a bad IP address neighborhood. Set your SpamAssassin way low, like two, send some to yourself. Read the headers carefully, see what score you get and if you can fix it.

Many mail services don't tell us **what** kicks it into spam, and this is really bad for us that are sending legitimate email. It sucks that they won't share with us, but the reasoning is clear, if they share with the legitimate webmasters, the nefarious will get the same info.

In the end, as mentioned in the previous post, it is absolutely vital that a confirmation page has a prominent message to always accept mail from example.com, and to check the junk/spam box before assuming they didn't receive the code.

An aside, I always find it humorous that the ones who scream loudest about this . . . entered a typo for their email address. "Your complaint comes from [e-mail] but our records show that the purchase was made by [e-mail]."