Re: Email Consultant Needed

From: Gary Cooley <cooley_at_mtnhome.com>
Date: Wed 16 Feb 2005 10:30:46 -0600

Thanks to Urb, Jim, Rob, Simon, and Anita for help on my email list
problem. Here is what I found.

We used a virtual server (first mistake) that used an .asp script which
mailed out form responses from our Web site to a list of our customers.
Several different ISPs, large and small, provided email service to our
customer base. Yahoo, Hot Mail, and other large ISPs allowed all of our
messages with no spam filtering. But all of the small to mid-sized
providers did some filtering, keyword here "some".

Seems that what I though was our mail server was not. When our form
processed the results they where forwarded from the virtual server to
several different mail servers, up to as many as 15 different addresses.
Some of the IP addresses for these servers were "marked" but not black
listed. Some of the ISPs blocked the marked messages some of the time,
but not all of the time, apparently depending on what black list they
worked with.

Apparently the reasons that Yahoo and Hot Mail allowed passage of marked
messages has to do with who's who. When one of the mid-sized ISPs looked
at our headers and investigated IPs for possible spam filtering, her
response was "Your hosting company must have friends in high places.
Some of these servers are on a known list for heavy spamming, but they
are only marked, not black listed. For anyone else, these would be on a
black list for sure."

I explained that our hosting company has customers in 130-plus countries
and is the largest IIS provider in the world. They have invested very
heavily in spam filtering lately, but it seems they still have serious
problems. When they checked into this problem for me after I provided
the marked IP addresses, they attempted to resolve the problem without
any luck.

So now we are moving all our mail service to a dedicated server that
does not use IIS, where we have total control over what happens to our
form results. I have no doubts that someone familiar with email lists
and mailing to them would have known this from the get-go. Others like
me get their education the hard way, and with the help of a group like this.

Thanks again for your help!
Regards,
Gary Cooley
Ozark Mountains Website, Inc.




Received on Wed Feb 16 2005 - 10:30:46 CST