Sending Unsolicited Emails Without Getting Domain Blacklisted?

[Planet13]

Apologizes in advance if this has already been covered (or if this is the wrong place to ask):

I hope to contact LOTS of small web sites and sent them and email asking them if we can advertise on their site.

I don't however, want my domain to be blacklisted.

what is the best way to do this? Email services such as vertical response / constant contact, etc., seem to be geared toward sending out mass emails. I would prefer to write individual emails.

I hope to research their sites and be able to suggest on which particular page the ads should go.

Is there a best way to do that so that my domain doesn't get blacklisted as sending out spam?

Thanks in advance.

[not2easy]

Contact them using their contact form or whatever means they supply for visitors to contact them. I would start with a preliminary contact to broach the subject and go by their response. It is not spam to ask a question. If you are planning to research their site it should be easier that way so that you aren't wasting time researching their site if they are dead set against the idea. When you get an encouraging response, then get on the details.

[Planet13]

Thank you, not2easy.

[SevenCubed]

If you want to look into a potential do-it-yourself solution you might consider checking out Thunderbird (v17) and an add-on called Mail Merge (v3.4).

It allows you to create a template with fields to accept names, email addresses, and then set them up to launch off a mass mailing to each address one at a time. You can also set the interval between each send-off so you can disperse it over a period of a few hours.

I have it installed on Thunderbird here but haven't tried it out yet. Someone asked me this question a week ago so that's why I'm looking into this as a possible solution.

[caran1]

Use a different domain for sending emails or a mailing service that allows you to send individual emails.

[piatkow]

Mail merge is standard on a number of email clients. SevenCubed's explanation of Thunderbird sounds more sophisiticated than the product I am using.

What you don't want to do is hit a single destination with too many emails at once. I used to have this problem with sending to AOL from a legit mailing list, all but the first couple of messages would be bounced.

[Hoople]

Use a different domain for sending emails or a mailing service that allows you to send individual emails.

I agree a thousand percent to the above. If you inadvertently get blacklisted all you loose is the marketing-example.tld domain.

There are a number of products out there to do marketing mailings that handle both global and site specific throttling. Some do number of messages per hour/time between messages. cPanel is by default set to 300 per hour IIRC.

Yahoo also tags mail as SPAM if more than a certain amount come from a single source over a finite time. Choice of specific SMTP server also influences SPAM scrore, especially if your sending IP is in a 'portable' range.

It goes without saying if you are going bulk sending that not being spam is your personal opinion. Do consider making Opt-Out a single click even if your country doesn't require it. [spamlinks.net ] Read carefully the country specific regulations. Read the postmaster pages on AOL, Yahoo!, Comcast and any other major ISP's named in your target recipients.

With some ISP's read their whitelisting process as it may mean the difference between being delivered to the user's spam folder vs their Inbox. [postmaster.aol.com ] [help.yahoo.com ]

[Planet13]

Hey there, Everyone:

Thanks for the note and the suggestions:

Just to clarify, I am looking to send out maybe ten or fifteen mail messages per day max. (so9me days I might only send out one or two.) I would try to do it every day though, so the email messages would add up.

I think that my main concern is if enough recipients use whatever "mark as spam" features their email has, then I might end up getting blacklisted. Even if I am only sending out about ten email messages per day.

[buckworks]

whatever "mark as spam" features their email has

Much would depend on the quality of what your email said.

If what you write is genuinely personal for the recipient, and clearly shows that you have checked out their site with care, you'd likely be okay.

[piatkow]

If what you write is genuinely personal for the recipient

From reading a discussion on the subject of "report as spam buttons" elsewhere it seems that there are IT professionals out there happy to use them incorrectly. A non specialist who doesn't understand the distinction between a 1-2-1 approach and a bulk mailing anything unsolicited by be regarded as spam.