Question

Topic: E-Marketing

How To Avoid Being Blocked By Hotmail And Yahoo?

Posted by Anonymous on8/18/2005 at 1:11 PM ET 250 Points
As a email marketer i´ve found myself being trapped in the claws of the HOTMAIL and YAHOO spam filters.

My company is a TRUSTe certified company member of The DMA and IAB. We have taken care of every single detail to be recognized as a Trustrable agency for online media.

Despite all this in the last 2 months my opening rates and deliverability started to fall down, when i asked my provider about this his answer was "HOTMAIL", more than the 90% of the messages i sent to the hotmail users on my lists are being bounced. Even in my control accounts, where i havent set any security and anti-spam filters, the messages dont even reach the junk mail folder.

My attempts to contact with the people in charge of this in hotmail have been unsuccesful, i havent get any answers from them.

I would like to know if anyone in here has ever been in this situation and if so... what were or are the correct actions to take to fix this problem.
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
或,SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted byInbox_Interactiveon8/18/2005 at 1:19 PM Accepted
    Although we've never been in this situation as badly as you're talking about, it happens.

    The fact that your company has the accreditation doesn't mean much in this case, however. It's your service provider that needs to be clean, too.

    Are you culling the list of email addresses that have had multiple souft bounces? How about those that hard bounced?

    How many Hotmail addresses do you have? Are you sending too many to Hotmail at one time?

    Are you getting any information back from Hotmail as to why the messages are being bounced? (Are they actually being returned, or are they just not getting delivered?)

    Do you send email from a domain owned by your provider, or is it yours? If the provider's, are you sure they've not been blacklisted?

    There are really many, many variables here.

    If I can be of any additional help, just let me know.

    Paul
  • Posted byPepper Blueon8/18/2005 at 1:32 PM Member
    Hi Byron,

    保罗几乎钉一切的头,especially that your certifications etc. don't mean anything in this situation.

    Try to find out why they are bouncing, that is key.

    Odd that high a percentage is bouncing. I would remove all Hotmail for a few weeks and let things cool down, that usually works as many times blocks are temporary.

    If you are using a 3rd-party ASP they should be able to help you out, if you aren't this is a good reason to do so.

    At the least, remove those bouncing, leaving them on will only continue to harm you more.

    I would bet if you do all the above, wait a few weeks, deliverability will improve.


  • Posted bymichaelon8/19/2005 at 11:31 AM Member
    Remember that e-mails sent a different times of the day (early am) are considered as SPAM by yahoo. You might want to alter the time to see if it helps. Try normal business hours.

    Michael
  • Posted byInbox_Interactiveon8/19/2005 at 12:01 PM Member
    Yes, in thinking more about your situation, I'd say you need to get on the phone and tell your service provider that they need to make this right--and right now. It's 100% their job to maintain these relationships with ISPs and Web-based email services.

    And just so you'll know, the Hotmail issue is not something that everyone in the industry is facing. I just checked a recent mailing that we did, and our Hotmail addresses had about the same open rate as the overall mailing (a little higher, actually). I only mention that so you can tell your service provider with confidence that others are able to get their mail through.

    Good luck!

    Paul
  • Posted byInbox_Interactiveon8/19/2005 at 1:03 PM Accepted
    "Only the hard bounces are being logged but the lists are not being culled."

    Bingo.

    If you are not identifying hard bounces and flagging them "do not mail" (we don't ever remove an email address from the database, we just flag it so we know not to mail to it any longer), you are asking for trouble.

    When ISPs and Web-based email services (for example, Hotmail) see that a good percentage of your broadcast is bouncing, they will terminate the mailing altogether. Moreover, if they continue to see that you're not weeding out the bad addresses, they will eventually block you forever.

    No disrespect to your service provider, but failure to keep the list clean does not strike me as the most professional way to serve a client. And now you've seen the results.

    My guess--and that's all it is--is that you were paying rock-bottom pricing. In exchange, you got a lower-level service that does not focus on these matters. You will not find any shortage of email service providers who would love to handle 18 million email addresses for you, but I would venture to say that your costs will go up exponentially if you use a top-tier provider (compare to what you are now paying).

    Moreover, a US-based provider is probably going to question the legitimacy of a list with 18 million names, even if it does cover a broad geographic footprint. As I am not familiar with the laws covering email in those parts of the world, I can not say how successful you will be in find a US-based provider with a good reputation to work with you. That's just a *lot* of names. I am sure whoever handles this for you will want several servers and IP addresses (as well as a unique domain) dedicated solely to your email efforts. This does not come cheap, but hopefully your operation is large enough to justify the expense.

    My instinct, however, is that you'll be best served by a company with a physical presence in those parts of the world.

    I am sure someone here will know where you should go. Anyone?
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(E-Marketing)