Replies to online enquiries going to SPAM!

cormie

I've had quite a few reports lately of the quotes I'm sending potential clients, going straight to their spam folder without them ever seeing them.

I reply to absolutely every email enquiry, usually very quickly and 99% are replied to within 24 hours so to think they are going to SPAM and potential clients thinking I just never bothered to reply is pretty frustrating.

Is there any way to prove to mail servers and the likes that I'm a legitimate non spammy emailer or any other way around it? I often use template blocks of text in my emails to explain pricing structures etc so I'm wondering are servers picking up that they are getting mails from the same sender containing similar wording?

I use Thunderbird pretty much exclusively for replying to mails and was thinking if there was maybe some automated way to text a notification SMS to the mobile number in the quote request as soon as the email has been sent.

Any other help or suggestions very welcome as I don't know how much business I'm losing because of this

Graham

SPF and DKIM should help, switching to one of the transactional mail providers for your outbound mail should make implementing either/both easier.

http://help.mandrill.com/entries/21751322-What-are-SPF-and-DKIM-and-do-I-need-to-set-them-up-

gctest50

cormie wrote: »

I've had quite a few reports lately of the quotes I'm sending potential clients, going straight to their spam folder without them ever seeing them.
.......

vantasks was on the spambot list of just one rbl : barracuda

removed it 4 u

you can keep an eye on it here :

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist:vantasks.ie&run=toolpage


.

cormie

cormie wrote: »

I've had quite a few reports lately of the quotes I'm sending potential clients, going straight to their spam folder without them ever seeing them.

I reply to absolutely every email enquiry, usually very quickly and 99% are replied to within 24 hours so to think they are going to SPAM and potential clients thinking I just never bothered to reply is pretty frustrating.

Is there any way to prove to mail servers and the likes that I'm a legitimate non spammy emailer or any other way around it? I often use template blocks of text in my emails to explain pricing structures etc so I'm wondering are servers picking up that they are getting mails from the same sender containing similar wording?

I use Thunderbird pretty much exclusively for replying to mails and was thinking if there was maybe some automated way to text a notification SMS to the mobile number in the quote request as soon as the email has been sent.

Any other help or suggestions very welcome as I don't know how much business I'm losing because of this

Every time I get a new email from someone not already in my address book the first place it goes to is my junk folder. So I check it a lot, and realise this probably happens the other way around a lot. So I always mark a first mail as priority which I think stops it. I'll always do a follow up as well on a first mail if theres no reply, it will be in the back of my mind that it went to spam.

cormie

Thanks a lot for the replies everyone!

Graham wrote: »

SPF and DKIM should help, switching to one of the transactional mail providers for your outbound mail should make implementing either/both easier.

http://help.mandrill.com/entries/21751322-What-are-SPF-and-DKIM-and-do-I-need-to-set-them-up-

That was a little confusing to read I see on the Mandrill pricing, your first 12,000 emails are free, this would be more than enough for me, if I can get a much better delivery rate simply by changing server, for free, that would be cool

gctest50 wrote: »

vantasks was on the spambot list of just one rbl : barracuda

removed it 4 u

you can keep an eye on it here :

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist:vantasks.ie&run=toolpage

Thanks a lot for doing that! I'll keep an eye on that from time to time

.

Deleted User wrote: »

Every time I get a new email from someone not already in my address book the first place it goes to is my junk folder. So I check it a lot, and realise this probably happens the other way around a lot. So I always mark a first mail as priority which I think stops it. I'll always do a follow up as well on a first mail if theres no reply, it will be in the back of my mind that it went to spam.

I don't have my own incoming mails separated, so everything comes to my inbox on thunderbird, I get a few spam emails a day, but at least I know I'm getting everything, I hope so anyway!

Do you reckon marking a first reply to somebody as priority will help it bypass their spam folder? Bear in mind, most of my first emails to people, are not a reply to an email they sent from their Gmail etc, but just a reply to a quote form that was filled in on my site containing their email. Pretty much everyone includes their phone number in my quote form anyway, a follow up email might end up in SPAM too so I think I'll just try get in the habit of sending a template SMS notification that their quote request has been responded to and to check their spam folder if it doesn't appear in their inbox soon. Once they reply to me, I'm hoping that will mean they will receive all future mails from me.




I got a PM from another user who checked my IP which he checked on a virus watch site which showed that another website, which I think is on the same IP, is marked as a suspicious site, so I think maybe that will affect the success rate of my mails? Not 100% sure how these things work..

Graham

cormie wrote: »

That was a little confusing to read I see on the Mandrill pricing, your first 12,000 emails are free, this would be more than enough for me, if I can get a much better delivery rate simply by changing server, for free, that would be cool.

I've used them for a while and never come anywhere close to having to pay for it. More often than not, switching to Mandrill for outbound mail is enough to prevent your emails being identified as spam so I wouldn't worry about the SPF/ DKIM unless you're still having problems.

the_syco

Got the IP from gctest50's post, and when I did a search for it, got the other site which seems to have been marked as a phishing site. I'm no pro at this sort of thing, but it seems that in January last year the IP which your site resolves to was marked as a phishing site whilst linked to another site. I'm thinking that this was the reason your mails were put "straight to spam" for some people?

cormie

Thanks again for the replies. January last year? Wow, it's scary to think this has been happening so long, I wonder how many jobs I've missed out on because of this.

What's involved in changing to mandrill so? Do I just change the smpt server to that of Mandrill and the rest takes care of itself?

Graham

Couple of tweaks to your DNS:

http://help.mandrill.com/entries/21650603-How-do-I-get-started-with-Mandrill-

Then configure your mail clint to use Mandrill

http://help.mandrill.com/entries/21694508-Can-I-use-my-desktop-email-program-to-send-through-Mandrill-

TheWaterboy

What you could do is just signup for your Mandrill free account.

Update your DKIM & SPF records with their

Then use their API within your contact form to deliver emails to your email address.

cormie wrote: »

Thanks again for the replies. January last year? Wow, it's scary to think this has been happening so long, I wonder how many jobs I've missed out on because of this.

What's involved in changing to mandrill so? Do I just change the smpt server to that of Mandrill and the rest takes care of itself?

cormie

Folks, thanks a lot for the replies. I'll try see if I can sort this out by the info given

Graham

TheWaterboy wrote: »

What you could do is just signup for your Mandrill free account.

Update your DKIM & SPF records with their

Then use their API within your contact form to deliver emails to your email address.

Sounds like the contact form goes to cormie so I can't see Mandrill would add anything there.

If responses to the contact forms are sent from a mail client, that's where the changes need to be made. It may be as simple as changing the outbound SMTP server.

cormie

Yep just to clarify I get the emails from my contact form no problem, but I think the fact that customers are contacting me through a contact form puts an extra barrier on the possibility of them getting their reply as their email server has no history of my email address.

Trojan

Apart from the IP being blacklisted, your email content could be weighing towards the spam end of the spectrum. You can read about that or send a sample enquiry reply to the addresses listed here: http://isnotspam.com and https://www.mail-tester.com

cormie

Thanks as always Trojan!!

I'm only getting back to this now, I think I got sidetracked with it before, but it still appears to be a problem with some cutomers

I checked the above sites you mention and this is the result of a typical quote reply I send:

https://www.mail-tester.com/web-1Sjh9y

It mentions about SPF entries and not being fully signed with DKIM, but I'm not sure how to resolve these?!

Graham

SPF is really nothing more than DNS entries. These DNS entries publish the IP addresses/servers trusted to send email for your domain.

Would look something like this:

v=spf1 ip4:83.206.106.17 include:_spf.google.com ~all

Check with whoever provides your DNS (probably hosting provider or domain registrar).