Email as a commercial communication tool is dying, isn't it?

Less than half of our users receive our emails

[limitup]

This sucks. Less than half of our users receive our emails because so much legitimate email gets filtered as spam these days. Basically anyone with a hotmail, earthlink, comcast, etc. email address will rarely receive our emails because they all use the silly Brightmail spam filtering system which is incredibly faulty.

I mean, this is just getting ridiculous. If you have a popular site and get a lot of opt-ins, or even just send out a lot of sales confirmations, etc. you are instantly blocked from sending mail to all of these users because the stupid system assumes you are spamming. I know this for a fact. I don't know the exact threshold but if you send out X number of emails to hotmail users in a set period of time you are instantly blacklisted. What a joke.

Is there any way to get around this problem? I can't figure anything out. It's a shame because over 500 people a day try to recommend our site to their friends using the "tell a friend" feature at our site, and less than half of these friends are receiving the recommendation email they are supposed to be receiving. That alone is tons of business lost for us. And that is just one example.

How is everyone dealing with this? It seems like email as a commercial communciation tool is on the way out ... unless you can somehow get all of your users (and their friends!) to whitelist you before you send them any emails, which is never going to happen.

[peterinwa]

Well, that's discouraging. I'm about to post for help getting into this!

[Corey Bryant]

Just a few things to help out with them.

Make sure your email server has SPF.

You should use your SMTP server to help with the reverse DNS query.
And then go thru and make sure you do not have any "SPAM" words
remove
submission
credit
merchant account
finance
mortgage
free
affordable
click here
bargain
guaranteed
loan
investment
loan
low interest
new car
bank
debt
pre-approved
refinancing
congratulations
subscribed

Now these of course are some of the more "common" words that you might use at some point or another. There are some other words but I won't type them here :)

-Corey

[peterinwa]

Thanks, that's very helpful. Never would have thought about it... and I'd likely have used free as in free newsletter.

I guess if you really were selling Viagra it'd be hopeless!

[limitup]

These little things don't seem to help. As I mentioned in my first email, I know for a fact that Hotmail WILL block you if you send more than X number of emails to hotmail users witin X period of time. It doesn't matter what the content of the emails are.

[tolachi]

For info on how to set up your spf records see:

[spf.pobox.com...]

and to validate:

[spf.sonologic.nl...]

You may need to get a hosted DNS provider to do this. Don't be afraid to! There are plenty out there that are good an free. If you site makes money there are plenty that are good and low cost.

Spamassassin can be used to generate a score of an e-mail based on certain criteria. I have a hosted lyris list manager account that will run any mass mailing I send out through spamassassin to check for red flags. I highly recommend doing this if you can.

[Corey Bryant]

Thanks tolachi - I just get a little confused over what URLs that can be posted & ones that cannot.

-Corey

[lorax]

>> I just get a little confused over what URLs that can be posted & ones that cannot.

A general rule of thumb is if the site primarily sells a service or a product then it's a no no. On-topic, informational sites are ok.

See [webmasterworld.com...] msg#18 from tedster.

[Corey Bryant]

Thanks lorax. I am just on so many boards from time to time, I rather err on the side of caution than get spanked with a wet noodle. :)

-Corey