Emails going to customer spam folder

[CarolineH]

Hi

I'm starting this thread as a follow-on from this one.

A worry for many businesses.

You probably already know this but I thought it worth a mention. Delivery into the intended inbox rather than disappearing into a spam bucket may be improved by using SPF (sender policy framework) functionality often offered by your web host in their email system but, in my experience, rarely used - probably because it's not widely known about.

If it's not something you know about or use then it might be worth checking whether your host offers SPF and domain keys*. If they do then chances are that they are turned off as they usually need a bit of configuration.

I have just lost a booking for two gites for two weeks because my reply went into the enquirers spam folder - However, the customer was kind enough to let me know.

I have checked my email settings for authentication and my Yahoo Small business account requires SSL/TLS authentication - Is this enough (evidently not!)

What can I do to prevent this problem reoccuring?

[la vache!]

Do you still use images in your signature Caroline? I would like to as it looks nice, but I don't, for the reason that an email with an image is more likely to end up in the spam folder.

[MyVRZone]

Hi

I have just lost a booking for two gites for two weeks because my reply went into the enquirers spam folder - However, the customer was kind enough to let me know.

I have checked my email settings for authentication and my Yahoo Small business account requires SSL/TLS authentication - Is this enough (evidently not!)

What can I do to prevent this problem reoccuring?

The SPF mechanism is meant to help in cases where you, say, send an email through your ISP service provider (eg yahoo.com) but want it to look like it comes from email@mywebsite.com. The SPF settings would say to the various mail servers that try to deliver your email "I know that this email has come directly from the yahoo.com server and it's pretending to be from the mywebsite.com domain - but that's OK, I have given permission to yahoo.com to send emails on behalf of mywebsite.com".

So if you do this, set up your SPF record on "mywebsite.com" to allow sending from yahoo.com.


This is not going to prevent all spam capture, though. There are many other things that are considered in the content itself - like images and links. I have a system that checks for delivery and does something about it if the email does not look like it was delivered. Please take a look at the following article on email delivery if you are interested:
http://www.myvrzone.com/home/do-emails- ... -get-read/

Thanks,
Neil

[CarolineH]

Thanks LV, I have removed my (pretty ) picture from my signature.

I have searched on yahoo for references to SPF or sender policy framework and cannot find anything - would it be referred to as something else?

I dont think this happens very often because I nearly always get replies back from people, but once is often enough for me - the person in question has a hotmail account - I've often had problems with hotmail - mails getting bounced back etc.