On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 12:42:26PM -0800, Kurt Andersen wrote: > Seen this blurb from today? I can't quite figure out > how I feel about it.
> > 3. SiteSell e-mails you back a point-by-point rating, > > derived from the widely used filter called Spam > > Assassin, showing how "spammy" your text is. This can > > help you avoid red-flag words and phrases. I'm surprised they made it public, but this kind of stuff happens all over the place... In fact, thanks for the lead-in to a question I've been meaning to ask: I've recently started working for an IT Media company (TechTarget if you're interested). One of the things that they do is send many opt-in technical-content newsletters to people (yes, I discussed "but is it really spam", I'm satisfied that it's not). However, the newsletters sometimes get trapped by anti-spam tools, and some users (for various reasons) like to report the messages as spam. The standard bulk email set of issues... The question is: What can non-spam bulk mailers do to show that they're acting responsibly/help avoid being called spammers? I'll be setting up a system to check the outgoing newsletters against a variety of anti-spam tools (including SA of course) to see where we can improve message content (like don't send out HTML-only mails people, <grrr> such a pet peeve of mine). But besides that, what can folks do? I was going to suggest joining up with bondedsender and/or habeas, but it seems like there is more than that and trying to avoid spamsign FPs... Thoughts? As an example, things I was thinking about were: - Choose good 'from' addresses - Choose descriptive and non-spammy-looking subjects - Include clear information about why the person is receiving the newsletter and how to change their preferences. - Make sure the hosts sending the mail have proper PTR (DNS) records - Make sure that the PTR records resolve to the appropriate domain - Handle out-of-band unsubscribe requests quickly, and respond when finished (and explain that there may be some messages sent before the unsubscribe, but waiting to be delivered...) -- Randomly Generated Tagline: Marketing Professional's Motto: "We're not screwing the customers, all we're doing is holding them down while the sales people screw them." - From "The Dilbert Principle"
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