Email distribution companies

[viggen]

A friend asked me to help him with this problem, as WebmasterWorld people are much smarter then me i pass this question on to you. :)

I work for a company that, as a part of providing public relations, writes and distributes various e-newsletters for several clients. We've been using a 3rd party distributor for our emails, but have recently discovered that they have been added to the spam cop list. Even our clients who obviously want to receive the newsletters, and are a part of the list, are getting the mails rejected by various filters.

Our emails aren't Spam, they are direct targeted to our clients staffs, customers, vendors, etc. (Sign up or cancel subscription options are also available).

Anyway, we are looking for a respectable 3rd party distributor to switch to, (<snip>), or to bring this in house with software that may be available for such a task. We've been looking at BigFoot, Acucast and Cheetah Mail as alternatives, but they each are considerably more expensive than our current one.

Any help, advice, options or anything would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

[edited by: engine at 2:32 pm (utc) on Dec. 15, 2003]
[edit reason] no specifics See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Shadows Papa]

pensaworks dot com
I use their ASP mailing list manager.
I can build the list, import, users can subscribe or unsubscribe, double-opt-in option if you desire. It plain works, their support is stellar and the cost is LOW.
I'm not sure if they have a version for other platforms or not.
I searched for months and was not happy with anything else I'd found - many were here today, gone tomorrow, or didn't answer pre-sale questions in a timely manner (so how well are support questions answered, then, I thought)
Anyway, I've had no reason to contact them other than when I had everything moved to a new server, I used FrontPage to move some things - BAD CHOICE - it modified some scripts. I contacted pensaworks one EVENING and in minutes they had looked and told me what the issue was. It was fixed the same night.
I can't speak highly enough of them.

SPAM is a major issue, and our wonderful government just made that issue harder to deal with! And it causes PROBLEMS for folks like you and me - I, too, find some of our clients, those who ASKED TO BE ON OUR LIST and WANT our email find it filtered by overly-aggressive ISPs and others.
If congress is to get involved, they need to use computer professionals to advise them, not corporations and non-tekkies. California had the right idea. Feds, butt out.

Shadows Papa

[rogerd]

Viggen, one thing to be wary of is that anyone can get added to a spam list. I have a forum where a user can subscribe to various topics. All too frequently someone who doesn't want notifications any more just blocks them with their ISP, no doubt flagging them as spam. Ditto for requested newsletters with obvious "unsubscribe" links, etc.

So, even if you switch, start planning your NEXT switch just in case. And make every effort to be sure only people who have signed up for your mailings get them, and make the means to unsubscribe as obvious as possible.

[engine]

It's possible to get blacklisted, even though you or your e-mail company never sent any e-mails. If someone spoofs your domain and others report it, bingo!

Therefore, it's not always the agent that may be the problem.

Take a careful look at the e-mail headers they send out. Is it your domain, or theirs? If it's theirs, they could be sending out spam on behalf of their other clients. That will end up blacklisting their domain.

The blacklist should clear in a few days.

I'd suggest you look more closely at this to establish the reason for the problem before switching.

[nakulgoyal]

If your lists, email users etc have been added to spam lists, better try and contact the agencis manually and you can provide the IP's and data and time from which those people signed with yo. It would be better for you in the long run and then when you can prove all emails are optin, ou are safe.