How do you avoid customer spamtraps?

Emails to customers not being received.

[Miop]

We have had so many communications problems (why won't people use the phone?!) because of email not reaching customers web-based email addresses and probs with A*L addresses, we have now started up a help desk so at least people can view replies to them on the interweb thingy.
Now customers are telling me that the emails from the help desk are ending up in their spam traps!

Could someone offer a list of words which might trip such a filter please?

[The Contractor]

More likely you are on a list the services/ISP uses such as [spamcop.net...] or similar service. Run your IP from the domain/mailserver and see.

[Miop]

Thanks. We don't appear to be listed there.

[Essex_boy]

Have you ontacted AOL and asked if they have a white list?

[FalseDawn]

How are you sending Emails? A lot of time, problems arise from sending mails from scripts (PHP, ASP etc) with wrong (or default) settings in crucial fields like "sender" and "from"

Try sending yourself an Email and examine the headers to make sure they all contain appropriate data.

If you are using your own SMTP server, it could be due to certain settings within that, too.

[shri]

SPF (sender policy records) .. research that term.

Sorry .. don't have much time, but will respond in detail if you need more help.

[postmaster.aol.com...]

[Corey Bryant]

Also - the first thing is to make sure your mail server has reverse DNS set up. Otherwise the consumer might not receive it.

It could also be your email content (too many "spam" words).

We are white-listed with AOL, have an SPF record and reverse DNS set-up. This has helped us quite a bit with most consumers. You also might put up something on the confirmation page that says if you do not receive an email within XX amount of time, to please contact you. This way you can possibly send the email from another email account or simply reply which sometimes works

-Corey

[neo_brown]

I believe something that is very important with aol is the feedback loop. Make sure you have this set up to monitor complaints.