Slightly off-topic from SpamAssassin specifically. But I have a
question about certain email addresses triggering spam filter scores. I
know anybody can create any rule they want to. I just want to
understand best practices and recommendations.
I work for a medium size but growing company that needs to have user
accounts verified. Same process a billion other sites use. I send an
email with a link. The user clicks the link, and voila...validated.
The problem is that gmail, in particular continues to insist on putting
these in spam folders and (theoretically) discarding some of them
completely. Some of users swear they never get them and then go on
social media, etc disparaging our company. You know the drill. Some
end up with a typo in their email address, and some finally figure out
they have a spam folder. But this is big problem that it's not showing
up in everyone's inbox.
I have validated my outbound emails with mail-tester.com and get a 10/10
perfect score. So SPF, DKIM, DMARC, everything is correct.
Now here's my question (at least one of them)... I send the validation
email from donotre...@xyz.com. We have a ticket reporting system and
seriously want to discourage users from sending in problem reports by
email. DoNotReply is actually a legit inbox, and I monitor it to catch
users that haven't yet mastered the art of reading. I want to keep that
DoNotReply email address to tell the user.... "don't send an email to
this address" But I have a co-worker that is convinced that
"donotre...@xyz.com" is a trigger for gmail's spam filters and all spam
filters will score the email higher as spam due simply to that word in
the email address. I'm not convinced. I do not want to change it to
something else that will encourage users to start inundating us with
questions/problems by email instead of using our established ticket
system.. But I also don't want to be shooting myself in the foot with
spam filters by using that name if it's indeed a trigger word.
So... recommendations, please... should I change donotre...@.....com to
something else, and if so, what is the accepted (non-spam-trigger) email
address to use to still get the point across to not send anything to
that account?
Secondly... more generally, any suggestions on how to crack the gmail
code and make them know we aren't spammers?
BTW.... we are generating these emails from an AWS EC2 server and using
AWS's SES SMTP server for outbound. The emails are html and have a
little bit of border, font, and embedded logo. Content is a Click here
to validate your account and an https link, followed by a thank you. I
can remove the letterhead and footer, but then I'm worried about get a
"not enough content with a link" rule triggered. Help!
Thanks,
Jerry
- OT: Trigger words in email addresses? Jerry Malcolm
-
