Automated Emails Going to Customer Spam Folders

How Can I Fix This?

[kellyandsummer]

We have a system set up on one of our sites in which an automated verification email is sent to anyone who joins the site. They need to click on a link in the email to verify (double opt-in) that they want to be a member. However, our database is showing that over 40% of these verification emails are going unanswered and we are always swamped with emails from people saying they never got the verification email. After some checking we've found that it is going to many peoples' spam folders.

My question is, can anything be done on our end to fix this?

[Corey Bryant]

Unfortunately not too much can be done about it. Every spam filter is a bit different.

There are a few things to maybe look at though. Send that person an email from the same domain - can they get it? If so, that is good.

Look at the wording there on that confirmation email. If it says free - get rid of that word. Less is another word to remove. Process is another one.

A few others:
subsribed
unsubcribed
receive
win
promo
merchant
credit
deal
shop
joke

These are words that I could think of that might be in an legitimate email. Of course there are a lot of others but I doubt they will be in yours :P

-Corey

[Tropical Island]

We just had two succesive e-mails blocked because, according to the client, there was a link in the e-mail.

[kellyandsummer]

Do you recommend putting "go to www.widgets.com" instead of "go to [widgets.com",...] or does that not matter?

[vabtz]

From my experience defeating Spam Assasin:

- if you use html in your email, remove it from your email altogether.

- if your using a automated email system look at the headers in the email it sends. You need to have it spoof a common email client.

those helped me the most.

everyone's problems are different though. The best thing to do is run spam assasin on your emails then look at the headers to see how it is scoring you email. Once you see what your getting penalized on you can work on reducing your score. Your goal is to get below what ever the default is in spam assasin ( I think its 5 )

hope that helps.. took me awhile to get my emails through to my users.