combatting spam filters

[Guest]

i'm sure i'm not alone with this complaint, but it seems the more orders i get - the less my customers get my emails!

 

firstly:

a) i do not send "newsletters". maybe if i am hugely upgrading or the website added over 10000+ products in the past month, i will send one of these. so normally, i do not partake in newsletter activities.

 

B) customers do receive product requests. but it's opt-in only. i don't harvest or associate customers with products. the chance for "mark this as spam" are slim, but i'm sure it does happen from time to time.

 

c) i am extremely careful in the wording used. i do my absolute best to avoid "those" type of terrms anywhere in the message.

 

d) the main offender is hotmail. i was lucky enough to catch the attention of somebody working their spam dept whom investigated (or at least appeared to) my complaints. they did instruct me to send copies of my most commonly sent messages. it took nearly 2 months but it seems as though some hotmail customers ARE getting my mails now..

 

 

 

but what about the other guys? still, randomly i get bounce-backs with error headings such as "this message might be spam.." etc. and basically stating the recipient never got the message! this isn't strict to one mail provider anymore. it's happening more and more with every common one it seems.

 

to restrict myself from thinking "maybe it's my wording or overall domain name" i registered a few domains for my friends a few months back and let them do their thing. nope, their messages even got stopped. i ensured we were all on separate servers and nothing other than the whois identity as similarity. (doubtful mail servers have taken it to the degree of reading this far)

 

the only message that seems to get through 99.99% of the time to any server is my confirmation message, telling the buyer what they brought, what shipping address, etc.

if this message gets through, i'm baffled as to why the status updates are filtered.

 

is it the frequency at which i update my orders that triggers a filter?

lately i've been updating the wordage of my confirmation mails to direct people to the web-based order history, rather than rely on the email updates.. so i'm not conformed to use specifically the email stuff. though i open to any sort of suggestions as i am quite interested as to what may be going on with these mail servers. why pick and choose?

[bobg7]

I have had this issue with both Yahoo and Hotmail in the past and found that if your on a shared host when any email is sent from all the users on the server will have the hosts information buried in the email information.

 

If one or more of the other users on the server did do some spamming and get caught (reported by there users as spam) the hosts information is added to the spam filters, when this happens all emails sent from your hosts server are flagged as spam.

 

I have been able to forward the information to my host, they contacted Yahoo or Hotmail, got the information about the offender and got there information removed from the spam filter.

 

Granted this process takes some time, I think the longest was about 2 weeks before it was resolved. On the bad side as users are added to the shared server there may be another spammer that gets the host blocked and the process needs to be started all over again.

[sdrio]

You can thank the asshats who send out real spam for this. As far as I can see, email is virtually unuseable now. We have stopped considering it as a reliable means to communicate at my company.

 

I'd imagine the bouncebacks you get are from customised mailfilters. My spam filter in my office has a list of specific words that will get the message zapped.

 

I'm not sure why people bother to actually advise people that their messages bounced though. If it came from a spammer, he doesn't care, if it came from a genuine sender it just proves whoever configured the mailserver is an idiot :D

 

I don't think there is any solution to this. Even if you manage to get hotmail to whitelist your mail, you will never be able to guarantee your mails will get through to all your buyers.

[Guest]

months later and i still get messages from people asking why i never emailed them an order number or anything. all on random mail servers.

 

i too have stopped using email as my main communication with customers. i set up web-based support tickets and will be offering phone support too, as an alternative.

[sdrio]

months later and i still get messages from people asking why i never emailed them an order number or anything. all on random mail servers.

 

i too have stopped using email as my main communication with customers. i set up web-based support tickets and will be offering phone support too, as an alternative.

 

You might also put a message somewhere obvious to the effect of 'If you do not receive your confirmation mail within one hour, please check your bulk / junk mail folder'.

 

Might catch a few extra.

[Arctic Fox]

That doesn't always happen.

 

If a message sent to a Yahoo address gets flagged high enough for spam, or your host/email has been blacklisted, it never gets to your customer. At all.

[Guest]

hotmail is the same way.

 

which is odd, because i'm getting an INSANE amount of spam in my hotmail box right now.. seems they're more focused on filtering legit emails. those spammers must pay big $$ to get let through..

[Arctic Fox]

I've mentioned this in another thread; I think it has something to do with the wording in the body of these emails. When I changed the wording, eventually I started receiving emails. First they wouldn't show up at all. Next they were labeled [sPAM] and dropped in the Bulk folder. After more tweaking I could get them to not be labeled [sPAM], but still dumped in the Bulk folder. After about a dozzen tries I finally got the messages to get sent to my Inbox with a low spam-score.

 

So, I'd recommend changing the wording and see what happens. :-)

[Guest]

what kind of words did you change or remove?

 

 

here's a photo of my inbox:

 

i'm a bit befuddled as to why all of this gets through:

pen!s

pfizer

viagra

 

..but our basic oscommerce notifications do not...

[Arctic Fox]

This is what I have on mine now:

 

 

catalog\includes\languages\english\create_account.php

 

define('EMAIL_TEXT', 'Congratulations! Your new account has been successfully created! You can now take advantage of member privileges to enhance your online shopping experience with us. Some of these services include:' . "\n\n" . '<ul><li><b>Permanent Cart</b> - Any products added to your online cart remain there until you remove them, or check them out.' . "\n" . '<li><b>Order History</b> - View your history of purchases that you have made with us.' . "\n" . '<li><b>Products Reviews</b> - Share your opinions on products with our other customers.</ul>' . "\n\n");

define('EMAIL_CONTACT', 'If you have any questions about the operation of this online shop, please let us know. ' . "\n\n");

define('EMAIL_WARNING', '<b>Note:</b> This confirmation has been sent to directly from BaseStationZero.com. If you did not create an account with us, please reply to this email and let us know.' . "\n");

 

I'd actually like to change it and make it more reader friendly, but it works now and I'm not wanting to mess with it. :)

[Guest]

i don't have a copy in front of me, but that looks default (minus your store url), what did you remove?

 

initially i thought this email was causing me troubles because it was default so i reworded everything completely and it still didn't get through (on hotmail)

 

however yesterday i did a test and my confirmation got through hotmail, but i am not sure if i added myself to the whitelist or not for my account :blush:

 

it seems to be a tossup, some stores can get by others can't. i'm extremely interested in what the deciding factor is for hotmail. because as you can see from my last post, they aren't too choosy.

[Arctic Fox]

You could set yourself up with a Yahoo email account then sign up in your store as a customer with that email address. Then you'd have a fresh email account to test things with.

 

Another thing you could try (this is what gave me the idea) is replace the text in define('EMAIL_TEXT', ' with just the word, "hi" and see what happens. In yahoo it changed my spam score from >4 to almost zero.

 

And... another thought is your host or domain may already be on some sort of spam blacklist - where a spammer has used a fake return email with your domain name, or sent out spam from another account on your host. A long shot, but is plausible.

 

You may also want to read through this: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm

[Guest]

i'm on a vps so i wonder if my host has anything to do, or if it's my domain? (of course i'd have a fresh ip from moving to them, unless a previous spammer held it)

my current vps host has strict guidelines to the types of sites they host (won't allow adult content and such)

 

but- prior to being on a vps i was on godaddy. i'm sure i don't need to explain the amount of blacklist notices i received because of the server i was on and whatnot... wonder if this may have anything to do with it?

 

and i will start a yahoo email and test. as dumb as it sounds that has never occured to me. always have been mostly focused on hotmail! :blush: thanks for that suggestion

[Arctic Fox]

No problem. :)

 

For an update, I've been playing with the text again to see what I can find. Here's how it went:

 

Congratulations! Your new account has been successfully created! You can now take advantage of member privileges to enhance your online shopping experience with us. Some of these services include:

 

* Permanent Cart - Any products added to your online cart remain there until you remove them, or check them out.

* Order History - View your history of purchases that you have made with us.

* Products Reviews - Share your opinions on products with our other customers.

X-Spam-Score: 2.153

 

 

 

Your new account has been successfully created! You can now take advantage of member privileges to enhance your online shopping experience with us. Some of these services include:

 

* Permanent Cart - Any products added to your online cart remain there until you remove them, or check them out.

* Order History - View your history of purchases that you have made with us.

* Products Reviews - Share your opinions on products with our other customers.

X-Spam-Score: 2.158 - "Congratulations" could be considered a spam word by some filters, but raised higher flags with Yahoo when removed.

 

 

 

hi

X-Spam-Score: 2.162 The "hi" trick didn't work this time for some reason.

 

 

 

Confirmation Prefs: Email Confirmation

When a new Member joins your site they receive an email confirming their registration and welcoming them. You can control the content of this email, including the subject and the sender, from the Confirmation Prefs.

 

Sender

The first email a new Member receives from your site is a confirmation message, so the address of the sender should point them to a good contact. For small sites the Managing Editor may be the only option, but on larger sites there could be a specific email address for welcoming new Members.

 

Subject

A meaningful email subject is always a good idea, so think about what your confirmation Message subject should be. Including the name of the site is a good idea, as in "Welcome To The Manila-Newbies Site" or "Welcome to http://weblogs.userland.com/manilaNewbies". Ideally, the new Member should be able to recognize the origin and purpose of the email without having to open it.

X-Spam-Score: 1.888 Just copied and pasted random text found on the internet.

 

 

 

I used the text above, but this time changed the subject: define('EMAIL_SUBJECT', 'Registration Confirmation');

X-Spam-Score: 1.879

 

 

So something is definitely going on depending on the text. (at least with me)

[Guest]

that's extremely interesting findings. you get these scores in the message headers, correct? are these incoming or outgoing?

 

i find it completely bizarre how REMOVING "congratulations!" from an email can weaken your sending power... as most spam emails generally begin with that word.

 

and how many spammers send "hi" as their full body?

 

 

it almost seems as though, the less cookie-cutter you get, the more you're penalized

[Arctic Fox]

The scores are found in Yahoo's full headers from the emails that osC sends out from my site. So I guess, incoming?

 

The cookie-cutter text is exactly what I'm trying to get away from and the spam score gets lower when I move from the original text (lower x-spam-scores are better). It's also interesting to note that almost every confirmation I've ever received from any site has always been "out of the box" text. Nothing fancy, nothing changed or unique. So changing this may help us in the future. :)