Jun 30 2008
Sending Legitimate Email
Article from Ron Edison, Founder and CTO of Internet Defense Technology
What you should do to deliver legitimate email (please don’t spam people)?
The main key being it isn’t spam. It is something the people really want, the double opted in for it and what you are sending them is what they asked for exactly. Additionally:
- Some providers support various technologies that may be able to help you including SPF and DomainKeys. Such technologies have various drawbacks and some disagree that they are useful but here they can very well help a great deal. They essentially provide a way for the recipient’s mail server to validate that your system is authorized to send mail from your domain. Here are some links: http://www.openspf.org/ and http://www.dkim.org/
- Analyze your messages using as many different systems as possible. If you use a bulk email provider such as Constant Contact or something similar, they may be able to assist.
- Consider using or at least testing out an outsourced email service such as Total Mail Defense (http://www.internetdefensetechnologies.com/) — this allows you to send email back to yourself and review the spam analysis of the message that will help prevent your messages from being classified as spam based on content and other factors. This will also give you an idea of some of the tech in play in this areal.
- Ensure you follow the various laws as well as policies in place by anti spam organizations such as spamhaus (http://www.spamhaus.org/).
- Ensure your system detects bounced message and what type and stops sending to recipients that don’t accept your email. Continuing to attempt delivery to non existent addresses can result in your mail servers being blacklisted.
- Get assistance from someone who really understands this field. It has changed greatly in recent years due to many different types of technologies and methods used to attempt to cut down on spam.
