[epub] Re: Spam filters - Especially America Online

[Sharon Tucci <sharon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think the way things are going, larger list publishers (i.e. lists of 
2500 or more subscribers) won't have a choice but to use a list delivery 
service that has developed solid relationships with ISPs.

Here are just some general pieces of tidbits some of you may be interested 
in. For a number of reasons, I'll refrain from mentioning specific ISPs or 
mail services. :)

Many ISPs, when white-listing a sending IP address or sender, have a 
requirement not to exceed a certain number of emails per hour or within 
some other time interval. So if you are managing your list on your own - 
either from your desktop or using software installed on your web site, even 
if you have no spam complaints about your messages, you are still likely to 
see email dropped if you exceed this threshold.

Another requirement is that you keep your list clean. This means to make 
sure that bouncing emails are removed. At least one of the major ISPs right 
now *appears* to be dropping ALL incoming email from a source if more than 
50 bounces are generating in a one hour period of time.

As far as AOL goes, I have to say that they are getting MUCH more 
cooperative in working with legitimate mailers than they were previously. 
If you want to know about AOL policies or are having difficulties, you can 
visit http://postmaster.aol.com. These pages will tell you most of what 
you'd want to know.

The biggest problem we've seen with people having difficulty with getting 
through to AOL is the use of unsupported HTML tags. AOL will not accept 
email at all from what I've seen that include unsupported tags. Of special 
concern is the inclusion of tables in HTML emails. This is one of the 
reasons I've seen emails entirely dropped.

I agree with what Bruce mentioned about the issue of seeing a number of 
Spam complaints from AOL users after changing your from address. (This is a 
good argument for using a delivery service that has a feedback loop 
established with AOL. For example, with our ListCast.com service, if an AOL 
user clicks on the "This is spam" button within their AOL software, the 
user is automatically unsubscribed and the list owner knows this.)

I've always been against the idea of double opt-in for *all* lists because 
I *know* based on trial and error that there is no way to make it possible 
to get even close to a 95% confirmation rate. People don't understand what 
the confirmation process is. I've also personally witnessed that we get 
more spam complaints from clients confirmation emails than we do from 
actual newsletters. So it doesn't stop the complaints. (Meanwhile, I've 
always supported it for certain kinds of list that are more prone to 
abuse.) However, an increasing number of ISPs are making it mandatory to be 
white listed (or conversely they will block lists they know are not double 
opt-in). At the same time, having proof of confirmation is becoming more 
and more important. Whereby a few years ago, ISPs getting a spam complaint 
against a confirmation email might have resulted in blocking or other 
problems, today it's not the same issue.

One final comment -- if your list allows subscription by just sending an 
email to an address without confirmation or anything in the message body, 
I'd strongly suggest changing your subscription process. We've seen more 
new clients come to us recently because of running into blocking and spam 
complaint issues because of the number of worms and viruses that will fake 
someone's email address in the from, resulting in people getting subscribed 
without their permission.

Hope this was of use to some of you!

Sharon Tucci
http://www.ListHost.net - Celebrating our 7th year of hosting!


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