My mail server receives a perfect score on mail-tester.com (10/10). It has DKIM, TLS, DNS all pointing the right ways etc but for some reason unbeknown to me it keeps going into all the spam filters on all major email providers. I'm really at a loss with this one. It's not listed on any spam lists also when you type in either my domain or IP. Any help would be appreciated. My domain is www.newagemarketingltd.co.uk.
Merry Christmas
Do you use DMARC and SPF ? Have you check your domains / IP reputation on http://www.senderbase.org/ ?
Do you send email from script like php ? If yes you have to respect some rules on your scripts.
You can check : https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126?hl=en
Related
I'm using a domain (say xyz.com) to send marketing mails. We've done SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication and we see the same in the email body (show original option in gmail)- SPF PASS DKIM PASS but the same domain in postmaster shows 100% DKIM, 0% DMARC, 0% SPF in authentication?
Any idea what is happening here? Also how important is RDNS for gmail spam filters?
rDNS is very important to a lot of domains, definitely set that up if you haven't yet.
Based on what you're describing it doesn't sound right if you're mailing the same way from two different #, the authentication should be set the same. Unless you have some sort of routing rule.
You should send an email to mailtest#unlocktheinbox.com with both emails and compare the results. It might shed some light on what's going on. You can read about all the email tester.
I'd like to set up custom domain authentication using DKIM and SPF for our 3rd party email marketing company (like mail chimp or constant contact). We also run MS exchange. Our Exchange guy is convinced that setting up DKIM and SPF for email marketing company will forever tie the reputation of the email marketing company to our exchange server. Is he correct? If not, how do I convince him?
I think I have enough info now to make this an answer...
Yes, if this is a permission-based list that you have sent to recently (if it's old that means likely spam traps) then I think you are correct that there's not much risk at all.
One way to convince this person would be to find out what IP address your MailChimp emails originate from (maybe send to a small list with just yourself on it but a real send). And then check out the reputation of this IP address using the tools available such as MX Toolbox and others, then show him the output. I'd be surprised if your Mailchimp assigned IP address was on any blacklists or had reputation issues
When he says exchange server is he talking about your company domain name taking a reputation hit? Or is he worried about the IP address from which you send non-marketing email? If he's worried about a separate IP that you send day-to-day email from then explain to him that your marketing emails will go out from a Mailchimp assigned IP address. If he's worried about the domain two things: 1. Your list is opt-in and you've sent recently so it's not an issue 2. If it was a bad list that would cause your domain to be blacklisted then whether you have DMARC, SPF, and DKIM doesn't matter, the originating IP that sends spam can get blocked for spamming regardless.
So I think you are right here but it's a matter of making the case.
We are involved in the project which is designed to gather UK hotels details that our client needs to create a paper guide with most popular and top rated places in the country.
At the begining of each year we automatically send emails out to hotel owners in order to ask them to update their hotel details.
Unfortunately Client reported that some of hotels never received any of the emails nor that email ended up in spam, especially on hotmail mailbox.
Is there any known approach which could help us to overcome that situation?
One of the solutions we tried was to resign from local SMTP server and purchase external SMTP server on turboSMTP, but without effect.
How would you advise us to you deal with that problem or what have you advised to other companies in the past? Surely there must be a way to resolve that problem completely and we would appreciate your prompt help with that.
Sending an email to multiple recipients within the same company may sometimes have that effect. That company’s email firewall often assumes it’s a spam attack.
There's a lot of factors that come into this. Thankfully, by going for an external SMTP relay, you can offload most of the issues to them.
What you can do, is make sure your domain and emails are configured to increase their validity. Two really key things for this:
SPF records
DKIM signing
SPF
SPF is basically a whitelist of IPs that can send email for your domain. SPF records are added to your DNS server. There are plenty of SPF generators online that can help (like this one). Your SMTP provider will also need to be included in your SPF record.
DKIM
DKIM digitally signs your email to verify that it's been sent by an authorised sender. Your SMTP provider will have info on how to set that up (turboSMTP docs).
If you want to explore more, I recommend Jeff Atwood's (co-founder of SO) article on how horrible email is: http://blog.codinghorror.com/so-youd-like-to-send-some-email-through-code/
I am trying to help out a little non-profit organization, who has decided to let One.com host their domain, including website and e-mail. Now, my issue is that One.com does not add SPF-records or DKIM-keys to your domain and I believe that is the reason why a large number of mails sent from the domain, end up in spam.
I've been in touch with their support, who kindly answered:
You are already using our mail servers, there is no need to use SPF for that.
Our mail servers already have SPF installed, and if you are using our mail servers, SPF will not be question since domain is hosted here and it is using One.com's mail server. SPF will only be required if your domain is hosted here but is using a different MX record or mail server
I've tried to figure out if you can leave out SPF, but all I've been able to conclude is that proper SPF on each domain is definitely the proper way, instead of just the hosting companys main domain. I mean, if it was that simple, how come even Google Apps, Zoho, Rackspace etc. recommends adding SPF, if it worked just as well leaving it out - you'd be using their MX as well, so isn't that the same? And wouldn't leaving SPF out leave us with the same issues as before SPF, namedly that you'd have no way to validate if mail was truly being sent from the owners of the domain or just somebody imposing.
So what it comes down to: Can One.com really leave out SPF records on their clients domains, send mail on the clients behalfs and still expect mail to come through without ending up in spam more often?
Thank you very much for your time!
The short answer is "No, they can't". The longer answer is a little more complicated.
SPF uses either the EHLO domain of the sending server or the domain in the Return-Path to look up SPF records in DNS. Most systems that handle multiple domains do not use SPF records on the EHLO domains of the sending servers, so the SPF domain is taken from the email's Return-Path. You should take a look at the Return-Path for one of the emails that this non-profit has sent through One.com to determine whether the Return-Path is on a subdomain of one.com, or is using the non-profit's domain. The latter is definitely preferred.
If the Return-Path is on a subdomain of one.com, then that's the domain that will be used to look up SPF records. So adding SPF records to your non-profit's DNS won't do anything. While this may seem the easier path, it causes problems with DMARC and may cause the email to be flagged as spam even if it passes SPF, as the address in the 'From' header will have a domain that doesn't match the Return-Path
If the Return-Path is on a subdomain of your non-profit's domain, then you should definitely add an SPF record to your non-profit's DNS. Looking at one.com's current records, something like:
v=spf1 include:_spf.one.com ~all
should do it.
By the way, you should be able to see whether an email has been SPF or DKIM authorized by looking at the headers of the received email. That's the best way to understand the actual behavior.
I sent 3 emails last week as replies from our website. None received them! One was yahoo, hotmail and an overseas domain. I am wondering if it's not a good idea to open a yahoo account with our domain name as the user just to reply to prospective buyers.
Your mail server's IP may have been black listed. This is common on shared servers.
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
First, check dnsbl.info to see if your mailserver's IP is blocked by any of the blacklists. If they are, contact the blacklist administrator to investigate removing the block.
If your email is business critical, then you need to get a dedicated server with a white-hat hosting company, control over DNS to set up your SPF/SenderID record, and to register with the Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo postmasters for whitelisting and feedback loops. Most of these will only accept requests for dedicated servers, where you have 100% control over the email they send.
If you are using an online contact form, make people double-enter their email address and check the entries match - otherwise you'll have no end of typos, which are naturally undeliverable and frustrating for both you and your customers.
You could also try looking at gmail for domains. It's what I use and so far I haven't had a problem withany spam filters. Also make sure that you are not writing the content of the message to where a spam filter could flag it as spam. There's some guides on the net somewhere. I found out that by removing the word "free" from the message the emails started going though (before I was on gmail).