Emails Going into Junk

[apexblue]

Have sent out a flurry of enquries for us to book somewhere and half the owners replies have gone into our junk folder.

[Moliere]

Who is your IP, Apexblue?

Moliere

[greenbarn]

It's not a hotmail account is it? We get the opposite problem of emails we send in response to enquiries ending up in the guests' junk if they use hotmail; seems to be a problem when there's attachments. We have to send a separate bare bones email to hotmail addresses in the hope that'll arrive, telling them to check their junk folders for the main email.

[e-richard]

More questions:

1. Were they Replies from the owner to the enquiry form on listing sites ? (as opposed to independently created emails)

2. If independent replies, did they have links, attachments, images inside the replies ?

All this will help us to avoid spam traps when we reply to enquiries.

I do believe your figure of 50%, and I believe it is growing.

I further believe that email will die within a decade from now unless Spam (and Spam blockers) can be eradicated. I am well known for supporting public beheading of anyone caught sending Spam, and I entreat you all to join me. If you do not like beheading, then is stoning to death an acceptable alternative ?

[greenbarn]

I am well known for supporting public beheading of anyone caught sending Spam, and I entreat you all to join me. If you do not like beheading, then is stoning to death an acceptable alternative ?

My preference is that the perpetrators should have tins of pork luncheon meat inserted into them via any available orifice until they're overloaded and explode.
Now that would be justice.

[pambon]

Hotmail doesn't deliver any email I send out to them (regardless of attachments or not) from my main email. I have to use my gmail account to reply to all those with hotmail addresses.

I receive them perfectly but evidently Hotmail dislikes receiving Telecom Italia! Racism there

[Moliere]

Indeed - we always found that Hotmail and the (unlamented) AOL were absolute b**gers for not delivering our Emails.
Sometimes they were just deleted, not even thrown into a recognisable junk mail folder.

It caused us no end of problems, sometimes only resolved by written letters.

Anything you want to do to spammers is ok with me, Richard, and I'll be happy to join in as long as it's painful enough.

Mols

[Annew]

I'm having a massive problem with this at the moment

So many of my replies, particularly to hotmail and google accounts, seem to end up in spam. My initial response to an enquiry is via a standard letter through PIMS, without attachements. Many of these are going awol... Is there a way of getting round this I wonder???

On the other hand - even my clean email addresses are being spammed to death at the moment.

I will join you Richard in your public beheadings (just off to sharpen my axe!)

[e-richard]

I think Hotmail is probably the worst culprit for over zealous spam traps, so whenever I get an enquiry from a Hotmail guest I send umpteen replies:
1. Standard simple reply via PIMS as Annew

Then in addition, I send a very simple 1 line, no formatting, no links, no signature, no pictures, no attachments "Have you received my other email....sort of thing"
2. As a Reply to the listing enquiry.
3. As a simple one-off email from my normal email address.


The wizards at Hotmail seem to have decided that if you have never emailed from your Hotmail address directly to me, then I am probably a malicious spammer. The problem is that the Wizards at Hotmail are not so clever as they think they are.

[Annew]

Thanks for the good advice Richard - I'll apply your method to enquiries I receive from Hotmail forthwith!

[greenbarn]

Is there a simple mechanism in a hotmail account to specify an incoming email address as clean, so it doesn't end up in junk?
I'm thinking an initial reply asking the recipient to do that (with instructions if needed) might be a good plan; along with telling them not to use hotmail ever again, of course...........

I suspect we've lost a few possible bookings in this trap.

[pambon]

Is there a simple mechanism in a hotmail account to specify an incoming email address as clean, so it doesn't end up in junk?
I'm thinking an initial reply asking the recipient to do that (with instructions if needed) might be a good plan; along with telling them not to use hotmail ever again, of course...........

I suspect we've lost a few possible bookings in this trap.

Hoping I've understood what you've written GB (being totally ignorant in these matters ) when a Hotmail guest's server refuses my email I receive from their server a long 'unable to deliver' message. This, I believe, has to be sorted out by MY server administrator to unblock my message to the Hotmail guest. I have mentioned this to Telecom Italia but, surprise surprise, nothing has been done. I have printed out several of these messages and will send them snail mail registered to see if they can unblock my IP address from Hotmail's black list, which is what it appears to be - due to too much spam being sent from my IP address

On the other hand my brother's emails (BT Internet - from China) to me this last week were bouncing back to him stating that my server was 'unreachable' for too long. I contacted my local server (not Telecom Italia in this case) and he solved the problem within the hour.

Technology is wonderful - when it doesn't hiccup!!

[Moliere]

Would that it were that simple, Pambon!

Unfortunately one does not usually get "bounce back" from Hotmail recipients, so the sender and addressee are both none the wiser. They don't know you've replied, and you don't know they haven't received your message. Double blind.

Until people stop using Hotmail, or the service sorts itself out there's not a lot you can do.

Mols

[MyVRZone]

Would that it were that simple, Pambon!

Unfortunately one does not usually get "bounce back" from Hotmail recipients, so the sender and addressee are both none the wiser. They don't know you've replied, and you don't know they haven't received your message. Double blind.

Until people stop using Hotmail, or the service sorts itself out there's not a lot you can do.

Mols

This can be a big problem and you'd never know it until it can be measured somehow.

With email tracking, we know for sure if a traveler clicked on a link in the email we sent them and we may know if they simply opened the email if they display pictures.

If we don't have confirmation that it was delivered after 24 hours then (like e-richard says) a simpler follow-up email is sent to them with a single link to an on-line view of the original email. This seems to catch most of the unread messages.

This is all done automatically after sending the first email so we don't need to check manually for anything. More follow-up emails can be sent out if desired - containing any text - but we normally just send one.

We see that around 20% of the initial email replies are unread (for whatever reason). After the follow-up is sent we're down to around 2% and even get thank-you messages for doing the follow-up (even if they had read the email and we couldn't tell).

This increases our chances of getting a booking by around 20% with no extra effort!

Cheers,
Neil

[booboo]

We use hotmail, had no idea of these poblems, can anyone recommend a email account for receiving enquires?