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High Volume – Best Practices and Deliverability

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Why do email servers get blacklisted?

This has more to do with how and whom you send to, rather than how much. As long as you are sending to recipients who have expressly opted-in to receive your messages (but not through a 3rd party) and you include a clear and easy unsubscribe mechanism in every message, you should not have problems.

Even when following these guidelines, you can become blacklisted, and the main cause for this is usually recipient behavior. Often times a recipient won’t remember signing up to receive your emails and rather than using the proper route of following your unsubscribe directions, they will click the ‘Mark As Spam’ button in their email client or webmail account. Doing this generally reports the message as SPAM to their email provider which this results in negative impact to you and potential blacklisting. Obviously though this behavior cannot be prevented, which is why it is important to have a clear and simple unsubscribe mechanism that encourages recipients to unsubscribe appropriately.

What is the primary way to stay off blacklists?

Only send to opted-in recipients and include a good unsubscribe mechanism in every message!

What are other ways to stay off blacklists?

Adding a SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record for the LuxSci High Volume servers to your domain’s DNS can be beneficial, if the recipient’s email provider uses SPF records. When used, SPF allows the receiving email server to determine whether the message originated from a mail server authorized to send on behalf of your domain.

Does LuxSci have whitelist agreements with any email providers such as AOL or gmail?

At this time LuxSci does not have whitelisting agreements with any providers.

Is LuxSci a member of any messaging anti-abuse associations such as MAAWG?

At this time LuxSci is not a member of any messaging anti-abuse group.

Do these measures (whitelisting, being a member of an anti-abuse group) actually help deliverability?

In our experience, we have found these do not really help deliverability all that much, as long as you are following the above mentioned guidelines and best practices. While some companies promote themselves as having whitelist agreements with major providers or being members of a bulk messaging group, we tend to think of this as a lot of ‘smoke and mirrors’ in that it actually doesn’t truly help anything.

What general non-technical recommendations can you make to help my deliverability?

Typically the less HTML and graphics content in your message, the less likely it is that they will be considered “spam-like” when being scanned. Also try not to send too many messages to any single domain name at once—it is good to split them up occasionally.

Why is it not a good practice to send messages with more than one recipient per message?

The reason this is bad is because it requires much more computing power to parse--for example, a single message with 500 recipients versus 500 messages with 1 recipient each will take longer to send. Also, messages sent to large numbers of recipients are viewed as inherently 'spammy' by most email filtering systems.

What is the maximum number of recipients per message?

LuxSci has a maximum of 1,000 recipients per message sent via SMTP in our shared and dedicated environments--this includes dedicated High Volume servers. Our WebMail has a limit of 30 recipients in each of the 'To', 'CC' and 'BCC' fields.

Are there benefits/disadvantages to grouping my recipients by domain?

If you group like recipients in the same domain as multiple recipients on the same message, it may make sending more efficient. However, the more recipients you have per message, the more 'spammy' the message may appear to spam filters, and the recipient domain's email provider may choose to rate-limit your inbound messages or just block them altogether for a period of time.

Are LuxSci’s High Volume servers specifically designed to help my messages get to the recipients’ inboxes?

Our High Volume servers are simple authenticated relay servers only—we do not have any special configurations in place to ensure or help improve deliverability. Having good sending technique and etiquette by following the aforementioned guidelines should be sufficient to give you good results.

Does LuxSci do blacklist monitoring?

By enforcing our strict Acceptable Use Policy for High Volume Accounts, we ensure that our servers rarely if ever become blacklisted. Should we be informed that a server has been blacklisted, however, LuxSci will immediately take necessary steps to request removal. Note that not all blacklists are legitimate, specifically those which require a fee to be delisted--lists run by reputable organizations may have a multi-step process or waiting period to remove a valid server, but they will not charge for this service.

Does LuxSci sell lists of email addresses?

No, we do not provide email address lists for sale. We also do not permit these types of lists to be used with our High Volume services.

What are some tips to help ensure I maintain a good mailing list to minimize bounces and maximize delivery?

Good delivery begins with a good list! LuxSci's Acceptable Use Policy requires your lists be 'explicitly opt-in', meaning that your subscribers have specifically requested to receive your email communications. Using purchased lists is strictly against our AUP, and generally results in large numbers of bouncebacks because sold lists of email addresses are often not checked for malformatted and/or non-existant addresses. Sending too many messages to invalid email addresses at a domain, such as gmail.com, can easily and quickly get you blacklisted.

Additionally, responsible bulk mailing requires timely and efficient responses to unsubscribe and removal requests--our AUP requires all messages have a clear, functioning opt-out mechanism. Along those lines, addresses that bounceback must also be managed and removed promptly from future mailings--LuxSci's free bounce back analysis tool can help you with bounce management. For a more detailed description on good mailing list practices, please see Trend Micro's Mail Abuse Prevention System guidelines:  http://www.mail-abuse.com/an_listmgntgdlines.html

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