

Email Delivery Voodoo? - alizaki

Quick question: What's the best way for an web game to make sure we have a decently high email delivery rate to inbox for users/invited users? I know its all the rage to just bypass email and just use FB, but we'd like to give the old fashioned way a shot.<p>We've done everything on this list: http://owocki.com/2008/09/email-deliverability-you-and-your-startup/<p>- Except the ReturnPath certification and seem to hit Gmail inbox, but not Yahoo/Hotmail. We've also only been testing the servers for the last 24 hours or so, is volume a pre-requisite to delivery or is it something one can manage from day one?<p>Thanks!
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jbyers
Reputation for your IP takes time. Some providers are smarter than others
about how long you need to establish a reputation. Google seems quick if you
follow the rules. Microsoft and AOL seem on the slower side, we give an IP a
few weeks to "warm up" its reputation. And you need to be active about
handling bounces, spam reports, etc. from day one.

Sending rate is also a huge signal for some providers (Microsoft) and
seemingly not for others. In our experience, if you send more than one email
per second per IP to Microsoft over a few hour period, that IP is almost
guaranteed to get put in the penalty box for a few days. Stay under the limit
and adhere to the other guidelines in that post and you're fine.

If you're going to be sending at higher volume, use different IPs for
"transactional" mails -- signup, password reminders -- than for monthly
mailings, etc. This way you protect the reputation of the IPs sending the
stuff you really need to get through. (In all cases, you better be sending
mail to registered, double-opt-in addresses, otherwise look in the mirror,
you're a spammer.)

Also as another poster stated, sign up for the feedback loops. Some are a huge
pain (Microsoft), some are very straighforward (Yahoo).

    
    
      http://feedbackloop.yahoo.net/
      http://postmaster.aol.com/fbl/fblinfo.html
      http://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#JMRPP
      http://feedback.comcast.net/

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a-priori
I haven't used them, so I can't recommend them, but I recently saw that Heroku
has partnered with a company called SendGrid that does email delivery as a
service. It might be worth looking into.

<http://sendgrid.com/>

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jsdalton
This looks awesome. The pricing is pretty close to AuthSMTP, which seems to be
the defacto email delivery service I see people using. It offers a lot more
features than AuthSMTP does though.

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barmstrong
It's WAY cheaper than AuthSMTP. 10k emails per month on SendGrid is $9.95. On
AuthSMTP it's $168.

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jsdalton
AuthSMTP prices are quoted yearly, so in fact AuthSMTP is $168/12 = $14 per
month.

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barmstrong
Oh, good point thanks for the correction!

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CritSend
Yeah, many ISPs are wary of newer IPs with low volume. To avoid volume
problems, you usually need to be sending from a server that delivers >10,000
mails a day. Also, check your logs. Yahoo uses the following graduation when
dealing with a temporary blocked mail: [TS01] -> [TS02] -> regular deferred
message. (found in your logs) Your goal is to stay at TS01. If you're
experiencing significant deliverability problems, Yahoo wants you to stop
delivering to them for four hours. (We wrote an article about this a year ago,
they've since then instituted feedback loops, which we employ in our
deliverability service CritSend , but they still help you demystify some of
what Yahoo's expecting from your server:
<http://blog.deliverability.com/nicolas_toper/> )

You've recieved some really great setup advice in this post and the owocki
article as well. Keep a tight monitoring on your delivery feedbacks and spam
folder clicks when you can by keeping watch through the feedback loops others
have listed for you here.

Feel free to contact me if you need some help going through those logs for
other deliverability items, they'll tell you a lot.

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alizaki
Thanks, I am signing up for your service. Would appreciate the leg up on the
headers. Whats the best way to reach you?

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CritSend
support ayyt critsend dottie commm is the best or come hang with us on
#critsend on irc.freenode.net or go to www.critsend.com/contact and pick one.

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bfouts
The return path sender certification will help with inbox placement but you
have to maintain good reputation (low spam and bounces). If you are on a
dedicated IP it will take some time for the reputation to improve...give it
time. But if your spam and bounce rates are high it will never improve.

Also signup for hotmail sdns and fill out the yahoo bulk email sender form.
hotmail sdns can help you figure out where your issues are with hotmail.
filling out the bulk sender form will help with placement at yahoo. Its all
about maintaining a consistent and good reputation...so if people are not
marking your mail as spam and you aren't bouncing lots of email your
reputation will improve over time.

Since you are doing this on your own I am assuming you want to continue down
that route but if you want ESP recommendations contact me offline so I can
learn more about your situation.

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spudlyo
Yahoo / Hotmail may just be temporarily deferring your email rather than
rejecting it outright. That list you mentioned is good, seems to have covered
most of the important stuff. You might also want to make sure your mail
server's IP address is not on any of the black lists. The following is a link
to a perl script intended to be run from nagios that checks the following
blacklists: dnsbl.sorbs.net, list.dsbl.org, zen.spamhaus.org, fulldom.rfc-
ignorant.org, bl.spamcop.net, and blackholes.mail-abuse.org

<http://pastebin.ca/1694024>

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ovi256
I recommend Critsend, but I'm partial because it's run by a friend. Heard good
things about them though !

<http://www.critsend.com>

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CritSend
Thanks, bud! We help out where we can.

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pchristensen
Just go to AWeber, pay $19/mo, send unlimited emails with highest delivery
rate in the business.

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barmstrong
Aweber is not an option as an SMTP server. Even for a newsletter it's pretty
expensive. Try FeedmailPro.com if you just want to get more features on your
blog newsletter. Otherwise you'll have to go with a real SMTP provider like
Sendgrid.com

