Membership activation emails & spam filters

How to get the former past the latter.

[adamas]

I am running a forum that includes email confirmation. However activation runs at approx 50% and of the addresses that don't activate an unlikely amount are yahoo, hotmail etc.

Now I suspect that these are being caught in over zealous spam filters.

I've tried changing the email address from one that samspade doesn't give the server ip address for for mail to one for which it does. That had no effect. Next step will be to try the authenticated smtp server for the original email address instead of the server smtp.

I also discovered that the mail program set a bulk email flag if you didn't provide that header yourself. Fixed that to just a marginal effect - just under to just over 50%.

Will have to look at the email templates to see if the wording might be ambiguous.

What else can I do? I think I've got most of the priority headers around set to normal (Is having all of those suspicious in itself?). What other combinations of factors can be checked as to whether an email is valid?

[Dreamquick]

Assuming you are being caught by weighed filters (check the headers in any spam related bounces), try these two resources... Even if you're not sure if they are the real cause they can provide a good insight into how systems can view your emails...

Firstly you have the list of Spam Assasin tests & scores which give you some idea of what sort of content will increase your chances of being flagged as spam & where your priorities should be...

[spamassassin.org...]

Secondly you can throw your email content through this free check and get a little report which applies those rules to that content and tells you your score...

[lyris.com...]

- Tony