Forum Moderators: phranque
not sure if this is the right place for this post -- but has anyone out there had any experience working with AOL to ensure their opt-in emails are getting to their customers? They seem to have an extremely aggresive process to filter through even valid emails... If anyone can provide any suggestions or links to additional sources that would be great.
AOL is a monster. Couple things that will help. Make sure that your list is not sorted alphabetically. A couple other ISPs pick up on this, but not to the degree AOL does.
Keep your list clean, bounces not only slow down your mailing, but creates unecessary issues with AOL.
If it is possible to do so, slowing down your send rate will help, this will also prevent the Qmail cache from filling up and crawling. Better yet, avoid Sendmail/Qmail altogether.
These are necessary steps,...the real trick to mailing AOL en-mass is to rotate IP addresses within your list and rotate your domain between mailings.
When AOL detects a mailing it begins to grab and hold your Qmail threads. Which will result eventually in bounces, but more trouble-some is that this can make your list virtually stop altogether (this can happen even if you configure Qmail to the max, 250 concurrent remote threads).
This are not suggestions to get away with sending SPAM, unfortunately, in an effort to reduce UCE, ISP's a penalizing legetimate busineses with quality opt-in lists because of the way email is abused.