How do you make sure email you send programmatical

Question

This is a tricky one and I've always relied on techniques, such as permission-based emails (i.e. only sending to people you have permission to send to) and not using blatantly spamish terminology.

Of late, some of the emails I send out programmatically have started being shuffled into people's spam folder automatically and I'm wondering what I can do about it.

This is despite the fact that these particular emails are not ones that humans would mark as spam, specifically, they are emails that contain license keys that people have paid good money for, so I don't think they're going to consider them spam

I figure this is a big topic in which I am essentially an ignorant simpleton.

Answer 1

A few bullet points from a previous answer:

• Most important: Does the sender address ("From") belong to a domain that runs on the server you send the E-Mail from? If not, make it so. Never use sender addresses like [e-mail]. User reply-to if you need replies to arrive at a different address.

• Is your server on a blacklist (e.g. check IP on spamhaus.org)? This is a possibility when you're on shared hosting when neighbours behave badly.

• Are mails filtered by a spam filter? Open an account with a freemailer that has a spam folder and find out. Also, try sending mail to an address without any spam filtering at all.

• Do you possibly need the fifth parameter "-f" of mail() to add a sender address? (See mail() command in the PHP manual)

• If you have access to log files, check those, of course.

• Do you check the "from:" address for possible bounce mails ("Returned to sender")? You can also set up a separate "errors-to" address.

Answer 2

It sounds like you are depending on some feedback to determine what is getting stuck on the receiving end. You should be checking the outbound mail yourself for obvious "spaminess".

Buy any decent spam control system, and send your outbound mail through it. If you send any decent volume of mail, you should be doing this anyhow, because of the risk of sending outbound viruses, especially if you have desktop windows users.

Proofpoint had spam + anti-virus + some reputation services in a single deployment, for example. (I used to work there, so I happen to know this off the top of my head. I'm sure other vendors in this space have similar features.) But you get the idea. If you send your mail through a basic commerical spam control setup, and it doesn't pass, it shouldn't be going out of your network.

Also, there are some companies that can assist you with increasing delivery rates of non-spam, outbound email, like Habeas.

Answer 3

Confirm that you have the correct email address before sending out emails. If someone gives the wrong email address on sign-up, beat them over the head about it ASAP.

Always include clear "how to unsubscribe" information in EVERY email. Do not require the user to login to unsubscribe, it should be a unique url for 1-click unsubscribe.

This will prevent people from marking your mails as spam because "unsubscribing" is too hard.

Answer 4

I would add :

Provide real unsubscription upon click on "Unsubscribe". I've seen real newsletters providing a dummy unsubscription link that upon click shows " has been unsubscribed successfully" but I will still receive further newsletters.

Answer 5

The most important thing you can do is to make sure that the people you are sending email to are not likely going to hit the "Spam" button when they receive your email. So, stick to the following rules of thumb:

• Make sure you have permission from the people you are sending email to. Don't ever send email to someone who did not request it from you.

• Clearly identify who you are right at the top of each message, and why the person is receiving the email.

• At least once a month, send out a reminder email to people on your list (if you are running a list), forcing them to opt back in to the list in order to keep receiving communications from you. Yes, this will mean your list gets shorter over time, but the up-side is that the people on your list are "bought in" and will be less likely to flag your email.

• Keep your content highly relevant and useful.

• Give people an easy way to opt out of further communications.

• Use an email sending service like SendGrid that works hard to maintain a good IP reputation.

• Avoid using short links - these are often blacklisted.

Following these rules of thumb will go a long way.

Answer 6

Yahoo uses a method called Sender ID, which can be configured at The SPF Setup Wizard and entered in to your DNS. Also one of the important ones for Exchange, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, and others is to have a Reverse DNS for your domain. Those will knock out most of the issues. However you can never prevent a person intentionally blocking your or custom rules.